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PRICE FIFTY CENTS. 



fHE DISUNIONIST. 



FOR SALE BY BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY THROUGHOUT THE SOUTH. 



THE 



DISUNIONIST: 



THE EVILS OF THE UNION BETWEEN THE NORTH 
AND THE SOUTH, 



PROPRIETY OF SEPARATION AND THE FORMATION 



% Sowtljerit ^litittir states. 



HERBEET FIELDER, Esq., 



OF GEORGIA. 



0PYR/C>y- 







PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 

1858. 







Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 

HERBERT FIELDER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern 



District of Georgia. 



CONTENTS. 



rA6E 

Pkeface " 5 

CHAPTER I. 
Introductory Remarks — Changes of Public Opinion 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Origin and Purposes of the Union 9 

CHAPTER III. 
Changes of the Country and People 12 

CHAPTER IV. 
Influence of Office and Party 16 

CHAPTER V. 
Sectional Party — Checks of Government 19 

CHAPTER VI. 
Employments, Products, and Resovirces of the South 22 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Expense of Government — From whom the Money is raised, and for whose 
benefit expended 27 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Anti-Slavery Aggressions S5 

CHAPTER IX. 
Kansas Question 40 

CHAPTER X. 

African Slavery — Scriptural View of Slavery — Effects upon the Slave — Effects 

upon the social Condition of the 'White Race — Political Effects of Slavery 42 

(iii) 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

PAOl! 

Our Northern Friends 48 

CHAPTER XII. 
Northern-born Citizens of the South 49 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Southern Cooperation 51 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Secession 53 

CHAPTER XV. 
Conclusion 65 



PREFACE. 



It would be almost impossible to write an article upon political sub- 
jects in this country without stating some facts and arguments that 
have been stated before. Hence it is not pretended that all the thoughts 
contained in this treatise are original or new. 

A large and extended work upon the subject of disunion would not 
be read by the mass of people, for the reason that the cost of publishing 
it would raise the price so high that many would not buy it; while 
others, for want of time and indiiference to the subject, would be 
deterred by the size of the book from reading it. 

Some of the learned in political lore might have been gratified to see 
some of the chapters of this extended to the size of the whole book ; 
but such persons need not books to aid them in forming conclusions. 
It was the object in writing this to condense facts, and arguments 
founded thereon, and bring them down to a compass that all might read, 
understand, and remember. To inform the judgment of the people is 
the only mode sought in this of producing action. The subject requires 
dispassionate investigation in order to arrive at truth. 

While the author professes no love for the people of the non-slave- 
holding States, it would be as unjust to attribute his motives to hatred 
toward them as to personal disappointment on his own part. I love 
the South, her people, and institutions; and feel that she has been 
deeply wronged ; that her condition in the Union is that of deplorable 
dependence and subordination, and that there is no just grounds for us 
to hope for relief from abject slavery as a people, except in Southern 
independence. 

The people may investigate the facts and come to a different con- 
clusion, but in doing so they will certainly see enough to induce them 
to pardon what they may think is the error into which I have fallen. 

H. F. 

Cedar Town, Ga., August, 1858. 







i 



THE DISUNIONIST. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

The propriety of a book having for its avowed object a calculation of 
the value of the union between the Northern and Southern States, and 
an exposition of its evils to the South, will be readily denied by many, 
and perhaps a large majority of the reading public. It is believed, 
however, that the most hasty to condemn will be those who have the 
least information, and have undergone the least reflection upon the 
subject; and that the book, if meritorious of its kind, will receive the 
more favor where circumstances have led the people to think seriously 
of the destiny of our section of the Union, and the probable results that 
would follow a separation. But be this as it may, the sentiments it con- 
tains, should it ever be finished and published, will not be forced upon 
any one. It is optional with the public to read the title-page and throw 
it down without a perusal, or to read it and remain silent or condemn, 
as interest or fancy may dictate. It is a voluntary thing with the 
reader to examine the subject and approve, or disapproving, to expose, 
if any, the errors it contains : whatever course he may pursue will not, 
in fact, alter a truth herein stated, or make true the slightest and least 
important of its errors or inaccuracies. 

If the Union is valuable, it will stand the test of investigation ; if it is 
an evil to the South, the usual exhortation against calculating its value 
cannot make it a blessing, unless " ignorance is bliss." 

It is conceded that the Union was intended by the original parties to 
the compact for good, and that it did answer that purpose and fulfil the 
hopes of its friends for a long period; it is conceded that it was a 
necessity, as well as an inestimable blessing, to our fathers in its early 
history. It is admitted, also, that unless a strong case can be made out, 
one that does not admit of a reasonable doubt, in favor of dissolution, 
that the behests of common prudence require that we should reject a 
proposal for that purpose. The people have been taught from their 
infancy to revere the Union. Its value has been proclaimed upon every 
stump ; in every hall of legislation ; heralded through the press of all 
opinions as to other matters. There are no household words more 
familiar to the people to whom this is addressed, than that the value of 
the Union is inestimable ; and may go to the extreme fanaticism in its 
favor, of asserting that it is treasonable to calculate its value. The 
burden of proof rests upon the party affirming that it is an evil to the 



8 THE DISUNIONIST. 

South to continue it. That affirmative is assumed with the full know- 
ledge of the great difficulty of sailing against wind and tide ; of trying 
to reason with a people who, in most cases, would rather prefer quiet to 
thought and investigation upon the subject. It is assumed also, with 
the full impression of the weight and vastness of the theme, and the evil 
of its agitation if the position is wrong, hence with the full and un- 
doubting conviction of judgment. 

CHANGES OP PUBLIC OPINION. 

Great revolutions in public sentiment and opinion often take place 
in very brief periods, which lead to momentous changes in action. The 
stand-point f*om which we gaze often changes, and even destroys the 
symmetry and beauty of the most lovely landscape ; and it is sincerely 
believed that but few persons in the South have viewed the union 
of these States from the proper angle of vision, and with the proper 
deflection of light and shade. 

It is not proposed to call in question the fidelity or integrity of those 
who adhere to it, certainly not to make them disreputable on account of 
their honestly entertained opinions. But to illustrate the changes to 
which they even are subject, let us recur a moment, not long enough^ to 
tire the reader, to the history of the American Revolution, back to which 
we all look, unionists and disunionists, with so much pride and pleasure. 

Now that the smoke of battle has blown away, and the heroes, slain 
and surviving the struggle, have long ago found peaceful graves beneath 
the soil they fought to free ; and since we can survey in the spirit of 
true philosophy the whole scene in its vastness and proportions, it can- 
not be denied that the greatest and best part of the whole was the 
change in public sentiment which led to the glorious deeds of valor and 
renown. Intending to detract nothing from the exalted statues history 
has erected for the patriotic soldier, still greater praise is due the 
masterly minds with power to discern and boldness to proclaim the 
necessity of the momentous act. 

But a few years before the war began, the idea of separation from the 
British government was tenfold more disreputable throughout the 
colonies than disunion now is in every section of the South, from the 
tallest of her statesmen down to the level of the common people. Those 
who adhered to the crown when separation was proposed were patriots ; 
but those who continued that line of patriotism, and furnished aid and 
comfort to their brethren across the Atlantic, assumed a cognomen 
which will never cease to be odious. 

As late as 1765, in the House of Delegates of the Old Dominion, 
whose session was held under the authority of the crown, when Mr. 
Henry dared to hint at opposition to George the Third, the then reign- 
ing monarch of the mother country, by reminding that body of the fate 
of Julius Csesar and of Charles the First, the presiding officer of that 
House cried " Treason I" and '^ treason" echoed from every part of the 
hall. But as early as 1775, it was glorious philanthropy and heroic 
patriotism to send cannon-ball and grape-shot, doing dread havoc upon 
his loyal troops, at Lexington and Bunker's Hill. 

We shall not take issue with the Union-loving Southerner as to his 



THE DISUNIONIST. 9 

intelligence, patriotism, or courage; great pleasure is taken in awarding 
these elements of character to him ; and it is as much a source of pride 
to us as to himself. It is only his unwillingness, from veneration of the 
Union and the ancestral glory of those who joined it, to enter into a 
calm inquiry upon undisputed facts as to the solidity of the foundation 
upon which he builds his platform whereon to live and die, and upon 
which he expects his children to stand. If he would only look into the 
question, draw aside the flimsy curtain that hides the Union's deformity, 
his boasted intelligence would perceive the dangers that cloud his pros- 
pects, his patriotism dictate the remedy, and his courage would sustain 
him in carrying into execution his plans of redress. His veneration for 
the Union is excusable while he believes it is valuable ; and having 
been taught from childhood so, his belief is excusable, unless he should 
wilfully or corruptly refuse to be enlightened. It would be intolerably 
stupid in one who has labored under the same delusion all his life until 
a very recent period to call in question the motives of those whose 
minds have not undergone the same change; therefore it is farthest 
from the intention of this treatise to wound their feelings. 

While the Union men of the South cherish a high regard for the 
welfare of the whole country, their affections must cluster strongest and 
closest to their own loved South. We know they feel a deeper and 
more abiding interest in the issue that passes from their own loins than 
that of the insolent New Englandcr, who loves them and theirs only 
for gain, and who insults them in their position of dependence and 
subordination in the Union, only to laugh at their calamity. 

But our cause is not hopeless. The only truly deplorable thing is, 
that our people know so little of the evils of the Union, and entertain so 
faint and dim conception of the power and glory that await them in an 
independent and separate Southern United States. 



CHAPTER II. 

ORIGIN AND PURPOSES OF THE UNION. 

A Union, in some sense of that term, may be said to have commenced 
with the early settlement of the American colonies, which was simply a 
duty and obligation, sometimes implied and sometimes expressed, on the 
part of those settling and residing near each other, by united action to 
afford mutual protection in such emergencies as required it ; the prin- 
cipal cause of terror and alarm being the eminent danger to which all, 
at times, and some almost incessantly, were exposed from the savage 
natives of the soil. 

It assumed a form as early as 1643, when, in order to secure "inter- 
nal peace and external safety," the " New England colonies entered into 
articles of confederation at Boston." When, in 1765, the British Parlia- 
ment imposed upon their American colonies the memorable " stamp act," 



10 THBDISUNIONIST. 

by which their just indignation was aroused, they were already accus- 
tomed to look to each other for counsel, and to act in concert to secure 
their own internal peace and order, and to resist intrusion from without. 
When it became necessary for their safety to consider, not of their 
indqiendence, but their rights as British subjects, and to insist upon the 
observance thereof, even by their own government at London, as a 
natural consequence, arising from customary concert of action, the Con- 
gress at New York assembled. 

As the spark of liberty (stifled and clouded as it was by natural alle- 
giance and a spirit of loyalty to their king) began to glow and to warm 
the hearts of the people ; as the increase of injury and action, oppressive 
in principle and tendency, made more apparent the necessity for resist- 
ance, the same natural tendency to union, by mutual cultivation, became 
A fixed and confirmed principle. When, after the battle of Lexington, 
the faith of the " United Colonies" was pledged at Philadelphia for the 
redemption of their bills of credit ', and when, still later in the struggle 
for freedom, the "Independence" of the United States was declared, 
there were evidences of a fixed determination of united and harmonious 
conduct. That determination grew out of conscious weakness and 
inability of the several colonies to accomplish redress by single action. 

In the "Articles of Confederation" of 1778, in furtherance of the 
same Union, it is expressly stipulated, " the said States hereby severally 
enter into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common 
defence, the security of thei7- liberties, and their muftial and general 
welfare; binding themselves to assist each other against all force ofi"ered 
to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, 
sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever." 

In the preamble to the Constitution of 1787, which may be styled the 
consummation and perfection of the Union, it is recited, that "We, the 
people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common 
defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty 
to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution 
for the United States of America." As we shall notice in the proper 
place, the Union retained to the fullest extent the federative feature, 
and never was intended for a nation — a consolidated government. The 
more perfect union was made, not to give liberty to the people, but to 
"secure" that which they had. It was made to "establish justice," not 
to authorize and commission the majority to outrage all its principles 
upon the minority, and that with impunity. It was made to " secure 
domestic tranquillity;" but the only mode our fathers instituted for that 
purpose was to establish justice and preserve the honor and equality of 
all the parties to the federative compact. 

That instrument, bearing the impress of eminent statesmanship, true 
and exalted greatness of intellect, and undoubted patriotism, entered 
into hj equal sovereigns as such, in good faith, if executed and carried 
out in itstrue spirit, was and is sufficient for all the noble objects 
recited in its preamble. Of a departure from its sacred teachings, and 
a violation of its stipulations and guaranties, the South is not and has 
not been accused. For the melancholy tale which hangs upon that 



THE DISUNIONIST. 11 

fatal error by tlie Nortli, our section can in no legitimate sense be lield 
accountable. 

The administration of the government under this compact of union, this 
model constitution, was most properly confided to Washington. En- 
dowed with wisdom of no ordinary degree by nature, and unsurpassed in 
the cultivation of the noble traits of moderation, prudence, patience, and 
forbearance ; with a heart brim-full of love and devotion to liberty in 
general and his country in particular; how truly and justly did his 
countrymen adore him, and how lost to gratitude were his countrymen 
now not to revere his memory ! 

That great and good man, after eight years of public civil service 
and successful administration, when about to retire from the helm of 
state, and confide the feeble through well-rigged bark to the care of 
other noble and trusty of her crew ; when he felt called upon by the 
heart-moving recollections of the past, and his deep-felt solicitude for 
the future, to deliver his legacy, his testamentary bequest to his country, 
guided by his own acquired knowledge of the breakers upon which the 
new-rigged ship, bearing on board his first and last loved, was likely to 
be driven, and upon which she has been driven; in the memorable 
"Farewell Address" said, <^ The unity of government which now con- 
stitutes you one people, is now also dear to you. It is justly so ; for it 
is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence ; the support of 
your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your 
prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize." He ex- 
horted his countrymen to " cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable 
attachment to it, accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as a 
palladium of your political safety and prosperity, tvatching for its preser- 
vation with jealous anxiety: discountenancing whatever may suggest 
even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned ; and indignantly 
frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion 
of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now 
link together the various parts." 

Had the great patriot and statesman been inspired, he could not have 
indited wiser counsel. Had he been " risen from the dead," and had 
spoken to the fanatics of 1858, that now swarm over the North like a 
dark cloud of locusts, he would not have, as he has not, been heeded. 
Who but the devoted South has watched for the preservation of Wash- 
ington's Union with jealous anxiety? Who has kept kindled and 
burning, in the day of prosperity and night of adversity, upon the altar 
of the Union, the vestal-fire of love and devotion, if the South has not ? 
But who, let us ask, has not only " attempted" but eflfectually suc- 
ceeded in alienating the aflFections between the North and South ? Who 
enfeebled the ties that then linked the parts together ? The statesmen 
of New England, the Northern, and North-western States, to an injured 
posterity (we would hope not with curses upon their memory) will have 
to answer. That the fault is not at the door of the Southern people, 
their history from the formation of the government — a chain of noble 
and patriotic deeds, unbroken except where tarnished with the sub- 
mission to unprovoked wrong from their northern brethren — every thing 
connected with the government, unite and accord and form an incontest- 
able combination of evidence to acquit her of the charge. 



12 THE DISUNIONIST. 

CHAPTEK III. 

CHANGES OF THE COUNTRY. 

In 1796, when Washington delivered his Farewell Address, he looked 
upon the Uuiou as an " expei'iinent" as to whether a common govern- 
ment could embrace so large a sphere; which experiment experience 
had to solve. He said, " We are authorized to hope that a proper 
organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments 
for the respective subdivisions, Avill afford a happy issue of the experi- 
ment;" that ''while experience had not demonstrated its impracti- 
cability, it afforded grounds to distrust the patriotism of those who in 
any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands." '* To listen to specu- 
lation in such a case were criminal." 

And why criminal to speculate as to the issue of the experiment of 
the Union ? The answer is contained in the statement when, to whom, 
and under what circumstances the Farewell Address was delivered. It 
was upwards of sixty years ago. The population of the United States at 
that time was less than one-sixth of what it now is, and still greater was 
the disproportion in wealth. At the time of the Revolution the whole 
population was only about three millions, which number is now largely 
exceeded by that of the three States of Georgia, Tennessee, and Ken- 
tucky, and by that of the single State of New York. Those three 
millions, poorly provided with the means of subsistence and comfort, and 
much less so to support the charges incidental to a state of war, were 
scattered sparsely into thirteen of the present powerful States, and only 
partially settled were those thirteen. The increase in territory, wealth, 
general intclligen.ce, the facility of travel and transportation, and every 
thing that can tend to make a people powei-ful, have kept pace with the 
increase of population. By the financial report of 1856, the total value 
of property of the country in the States and Territories reaches the 
enormous sum of eleven billions and three hundred millions of dollars.* 

The total receipts of the government for the year 1796, (the date of 
the Farewell Address,) by customs, sale of lands, and miscellaneous 
sources, amounted to only the sum of $8,740,000; while in 1856 the 
sum exceeded $74,000,000. 

* The statistical information contained lierein upon the population, resources, 
finances, commerce, and navigation, is derived from the official reports for the 
years stated. The reason all the statements intended to represent the present 
status of the country are not confined to a given year is not any supposed 
advantage to the argument, but the want of full reports upon every point for any 
given 3'ear ; and upon each point elaborated by the example of a report for a given 
year, the year taken is supposed to be a fair example. The census report of 
18;")0 is the last general report for that subject. Our own calculations upon these 
data do not profess to be strictly accurate ; it being the intention to approximate 
the true number or quantity with sufficient certainty : for instance, round numbers 
below the true sum are stated to facilitate the reading ; hundreds, in footing up 
thousands ; and thousands in millions, are sometimes cast off. But those who see 
fit to travel through the labyrinth of number and quantities will find the statements 
substantially correct. 



THE DISUNIONIST. 13 

The people of the United States in 1796 exported of their domestic 
produce, the value of $40,764,000 ; in 1856 they exported upwards of 
^326,000,000. 

The total amount of sail and steam licensed and registered tonnage of 
the United States in 1796 was only 831,899 tons; while we possessed 
in 1856, 4,871,652 tons. 

The Mint of the United States in the year 1796 coined the sum of 
$181,805; and in 1856 the handsome sum of $64,283,963 90, 

The total amount of manufactures of the year 1850, including cotton, 
wool, wrought and pig-iron, castings, salt, the products of breweries and 
distilleries and fisheries, the manufactures produced in families, and all 
other manufactures, was about $1,055,000,000. These statements, 
derived from the official reports of the country, published under the 
direction of Congress, and from our own calculations upon data there 
given, serve to convey some idea of the vast resources of the country 
compared with the early days of the Confederacy. 

For the people of that period there was no reasonable ground to hope 
for the preservation of their separate and independent existence, except 
in concert and union. They had entered upon the great experiment of 
self-government, then an unexplored sea. They sailed upon the good 
ship Union, the chart and compass justice and equality. They "insisted 
upon nothing but right, and submitted to nothing wrong." This applied 
to other nations; for injury and oppression, fraud and plunder, by one 
section towards another, was no part of the oi'iginal programme. They 
had " millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute" — tribute to foreign 
countries. That one section of the Union should pay tribute to another 
never was put in the bond of union. But the South, as we shall here- 
after show, has, and pays millions of tribute annually to the North, and 
has not a cent she is willing to use for defence against the worst enemies 
she has upon the whole earth, her Northern brethren. 

To the South, then, union was as vital as separation is now. To 
them there was no retreat but in total destruction then, even if they 
had desired such a thing. They had, by joint labor and toil, and with a 
common interest at stake, conquered independence, and turned their 
backs upon the crown of the most avaricious and powerful nation in the 
world; than to whose clutches, to the grim jaws of death would they 
rather go. Division would have made them a prey to other powers, 
whose watchful and jealous eyes rested upon the rising young giant of 
the West. They stood hedged in upon the rear and either side : the 
Red Sea lay stretched out, spanning to the dim outlines of vision in front. 
It was an august and momentous period for the fathers of this republic. 
Fortunately there was a Moses in the camp : a man that feared God and 
loved his countrymen. The father of his country stretched forth his 
hand and waved it over the dark billows, the path of free government 
marked the way, and on moved the solemn procession, led by the same 
dauntless spirit that had led their armies to victory. 

Was it wise to doubt, and thus make really doubtful that momentous 
experiment, pregnant with the weal of unborn millions ? Was not 
" speculation in such a case indeed criminal ?" But how different is 
the case as it now stands by the record ! with the proper union of hearts. 



14 THEDISUNIONIST. 

and a good cause to arouse our people, we could now far better withstand 
an assault by the allied powers of Europe than our fathers could that 
of a single power in 177G. 

We shall show hereafter that the " indissoluble community of interests 
as one nation," of which President Washington spoke in 1796, does not 
exist in 1858. 

CHANGES IN THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE. 

The people of the then United States to whom the Farewell Address 
was delivered, by the language of that instrument are shown to have 
had, " with slight shades of difference,'^ the same religion, manners, 
habits, and political principles. That description does not suit the 
country at this day. If it be not irreverent, let us suppose the great 
spirit of Washington, with the vision of divinity, commissioned from 
high Heaven to earth, to bear important dispatches to a people filling 
that description : that scope of land between Maine and Texas, taken as a 
whole, would be the last spot upon which the angel would alight. But 
if a line of separation were run j ust north of that portion where slaves 
are held as property, cutting oiF the whole of what is now known as free 
States and Territories, that which wei'e left on the south of the line 
would '' fill the bill." Those north, should the experiment ever be 
made, it will be found do not. 

A different race of people occupy the Northern States of this Union 
from those who lived in Washington's day, actuated by different motives 
and principles. With whom did he and Carroll, Madison, Rutledge, 
Pinckney, and Baldwin meet in convention, when they gave to the 
world for a model of government the Constitution of the United States ? 
Who came to that council-chamber from New York, New Jersey, and 
the New England States, and there mingled minds and souls for the 
common good ? Go read the list of patriotic statesmen from the 
Northern and Eastern States who aided in the formation and early 
administration of the government, and see if their like live there or can 
possibly be born of the stock that now occupy their costly heritage but 
to abuse the trust. How iinlike the great leadei's of the North of 1858 
were Hamilton, Jay, John Adams, Guerry, Cushing, Wolcott, Knox, 
Wilson, Langdon, Dayton, Clinton, and Eufus King ! Can it be pre- 
tended, with any show of truth, that in a political aspect there is a 
point of reasonable resemblance between the people who honored these 
and their colaborers from the North, and the constituents of Mr. 
Seward, Mr. Giddings, or Mr. Burlingame, in 1858 ? 

Was the New England pulpit in 1788 desecrated, from Sabbath to 
Sabbath, by the belching forth of malicious slander and detractions upon 
the sons and daughters of the Old Dominion ? Was it not rather a 
song of praise for the common deliverance, and a pi-aycr of the heart 
for the common weal ? Did the pious preachers and laymen of that day 
ever think of sending out men with gun and sword to drive the sons of 
Georgia from the common territory? Did the heroic matrons of those 
days salute the ears of the rising sons of noble sires, from the earliest 
dawn of intellect to hardy manhood, with curses upon the South and her 
institutions ? Did the Northern press, that great channel of public 



THE DISUNIONIST. 15 

sentiment and intelligence, disgorge from day to day, and from year to 
year, homilies of deuuuciatiou upon the land of Pinckney, Macon, and 
Jeiferson ? Nay. The blood of Northern and Southern soldiers, that 
had run and settled in mingled pools, had scarcely dried from the field 
of battle. They felt weak and helpless as the South did. They also 
felt the need of a common bond of union, which could not be had unless 
upon equal terms. Then the fresh memory of common aid and benefits 
made all sections grateful and just to each other. Then it was that the 
Constitution was framed upon paper, and, for a while, was carried out in 
spirit. 

Had our Northern brethren been true to the compact of union, or 
even only now and then suffered its sacred guai-anties to be violated, 
the magnanimity of the South would for ever have suppressed serious 
complaint. But as the thunder of revolutionary guns died upon the ear, 
and the recollections of the gallant charge and the heroic defence grow 
less vivid in their minds ; as the scenes of the past became more and 
more obscure in the dim distance ; as they began to feel the growth of 
wealth and the increase of power, and to realize the truth of their own 
numerical superiority, and to be conscious of their own real independence, 
the lines of gratitude from their hearts, one by one, were effaced ; 
justice lost her throne, whose seat. Inequality, in proud disdain, dese- 
crates. There she sits, levying tribute of the Southern agriculturalist, 
to clothe in costly purple and feed on sumptuous repast the lordly 
manufacturer. There she sits, strengthening, year by year, the chains 
of Southern subordination and slavery. 

The people of our section of the Union have not undergone all the 
mutations that have passed upon their Northern confederates. We have 
continued to abide the Constitution and its stipulations with a strict 
construction of the powers of the central government; we know no 
" higher law" than that instrument imposes upon all ; we claim no 
more than our rights, ask for no exclusive or class legislation in our 
favor. Our history will bear out the assertion that ours are and ever 
have been a generous and magnanimous people. But there is one 
change that is now, and has been for years, going on in the minds of the 
people of the slaveholdiug States. They love not as their fathers did 
the people of the non-slaveholding States. A sense of injury and insult, 
and aggression upon their rights, by a people who have no interest in 
the slave property of the South, cannot fail eventually, if it has not 
already produced, in lieu of the former fraternal feelings that of deep- 
seated and radical hatred. Who that knows any thing upon the subject 
can assert now that there is any true friendship between our people and 
those of the North ? Old men of Carolina, do you cherish the same 
regard for them now that you did in early life ? Young and middle- 
aged men of Alabama and the Southwest, do your hearts respond 
with the same warmth to the praises and adulations of the Union they 
did eight years ago ? Do you love the North at all ? If so, upon what 
State do your devotions centre ? Is it one of those who send out 
Sharpe's rifles to Kansas, to bleed your son who has emigrated to that 
Territory, and drive him from the property for which he has paid his 
money and upon which he has expended his labor ? Is it one of those 



16 THE DISUNIONIST. 

whose State Legislature has repealed the law of Congress to carry out the 
requirements of the Constitution for the recovery of fugitive slaves ; for 
which law the South, in substance and eSect, gave the entire fruits of 
the war with Mexico, in whose battles your brave son, or brother, or 
father was slain ? What class of the Northern people do you admire ? 
Is it such pious, higher-law gentry as believe that " Sharpe's rifle is a 
truly moral agency," that " there is more moral power in one of these 
instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas are concerned, than in 
a hundred Bibles l* Is it such as demand *' emancipation for the slave 
at any price — of Constitution, of Union, of country 1" Is it such as 
" sincerely hope a civil war may soon burst upon the country," and 
that would "rejoice in the retributive justice of Heaven;" to see 
*' England, France, and Spain take this slavery-accursed nation into 
their special consideration," and the ^' streets of this ' land of the free 
and home of the brave' run with blood to the horses' bridles ?" Is it 
such as declare that " God Almighty has made it impossible, from the 
beginning, for liberty and slavery to mingle together; or a union to be 
founded between abolitionists and slaveholders ;" and that " this Union 
is a lie, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell ?" Or is it 
the more temperate and prudent in expression, who are equally opposed 
to your slave institution ; and who, by milder means, and slower but 
surer means, would undermine and overthrow it ? those who can meet 
you in convention and smile upon you, and curse their reckless and 
imprudent neighbors, who by rash means, and they by mild, aim at and 
oppose the same object? 

Southern Christians of all orders, whose authentic Bible recognizes 
and tolerates slavery, and whose pulpits are dedicated to pure religion, 
how do you feel towards these Northern Pharisees, whose temples of 
worship are constantly defiled by your abuse ; who refuse you Christian 
fellowship and communion ; and who essay to dictate to you as to your 
own domestic relations ? Are we not, indeed, a " house divided against 
itself?" 

If it be true that we do riot love the people of the North, and they 
not us, and if we shall show hereafter that we are not interested in con- 
tinuing our federative connection with them, then it would seem that, in 
the absence of love or interest, the ties of the Union are^really " enfee- 
bled," if not already broken. 



CHAPTER IV. 

INFLUENCES OF OFFICE AND PARTY. 

Is there any limitation upon the assertion that there is no common 
brotherhood, no common bond of union between the North and South ? 
That in case of separation there are no tears to be shed over broken 
fraternal relations and attachments ? Yes, there is an exception — office 
and spoils, the " flesh-pots" of national honors. 



THE DISUNIONIST, 17 

These national honors ! what baneful influence they have had upon 
the rights of our section! Weakest in numbers, and unable to cope in 
elections with our Northern confederates, who have ever ignored and 
refused support to our truest men, the honors of national office have 
ever been a premium upon infidelity to our interests by our most gifted 
and influential statesmen. How illustrious and instructive the excep- 
tion in case of Mr. Calhoun ! When was there a time when the North 
would have supported him ? and what was his crime ? Fidelity to the 
Constitution, which, properly administered, would give equal justice, 
nothing more, to all sections of the country. When was there a time 
when he was sufficiently honored in his own section ? Not until his 
ashes were cold, and he out of the way of all political antagonism. The 
greatest intellect of the age in which he lived ; in a country where not 
only his talents, but his unbending devotion to constitutional liberty, 
were most needed, he stood the least chance of all her statesmen to be 
called to the helm of government. 

The truth is, and has been for a quarter of a century past, that no 
man could be elected to the Presidency, an office whose constituency 
was the entire population of the country North and South, unless he 
held such position as that he could be interpreted and understood 
differently in different portions of the country. All the platforms of 
parties whose candidates have sought Northern and Southern support 
have been 'differently understood with different motives by the North and 
South. 

It was cause of suspicion of any Southern man's integrity and patriot- 
ism, in 1856, who dared say the " Cincinnati platform" was subject to 
different constructions. In the South it was regarded as an open issue, 
fought without dissimulation, between abolition and toleration of slavery : 
yet it was not a plain document; else Mr. Buchanan, the standard- 
bearer, or Mr. Douglass, the embodiment of his party's creed up to that 
time, was a downright fool ; . for they each understood it sufficiently, 
both upon the Central American and Territorial question : we cannot 
doubt their patriotism or the purity of their motives. They are both 
'■'■ lionorahle men." 

We would not cast a shade upon the bright fame of Mr. Buchanan. 
He stands like a connecting-link between the living and the dead ; the 
wisdom of the past and the folly of the present. The representative of 
Pennsylvania, he represented his people with ability and fidelity; the 
President of the United States, he cannot do it. He is the head of a 
great national party, (as good a one of that kind as can reasonably be 
expected,) whose members come up to convention and subscribe to and 
publish the same platform ; but whose principles do not accord. In 
one section they are decidedly and unanimously pro-slavery in the 
abstract, and favor its extension. In the other, they are against slavery 
in sympathy, feeling, and action, and opposed to its extension. In one 
section they could, if they had power, put forward a system of fair and 
equitable administration of the government; in the other, discriminations 
which impose nearly all the burdens of government upon one end of 
the confederacy, and confer most of its benefits upon the other. 

The president of a Northern or Southern republic, he would doubtless 
2 



18 THEDISUNIONIST. 

be just; but neither he, nor any mortal man occupying his position, can 
be such, and preserve in harmony the organization of a national party. 

A party platform is supposed to foreshadow the action of the party 
(when placed in power) upon the interests of the people : when those 
interests are radically difi'erent, as we shall show hereafter, the platform 
cannot be made so as to commend itself to the opposite interests, and to 
command their support, unless it is doubtful in its terms. A platform 
which secures, in terms, the ends which are covertly worked out against 
the South, would receive no support here ; while one which unequivo- 
cally provided for the protection and preservation of our equality and 
constitutional rights and privileges would be scouted as sectional. And 
hence the national Union men of the South themselves would not contend 
for and insist upon it. The time for preserving our rights in the Union, 
through national parties, has long since passed ; our weapons of warfare 
and self-defence, so polished and keen in the hands of such stalwart 
knights as Forsyth, Crawford, Calhoun, and Jefferson, have cankered by 
non°use. The voices of such men as Rhett, Bethune, Yancy, Quitman, 
and others, are drowned amidst the universal clamor for the more 
popular national leaders; and such arguments as they use and put forth, 
instead of being answered and refuted, are flouted with " dismiion," or 
^'sectional," which, to an uninformed throng of Union-lovers, is a suffi- 
cient and satisfactory reply. The cause of the South has suffered much 
by the division of her advocates and champions, who, in many instances, 
instead of openly proclaiming themselves disunionists per se, and show- 
ing, by incontestable truth and argument, the glory there is in being 
such, they have vainly sought to keep up party alligaments, and there- 
by popular favor. The reason why disunion has not been considered 
more in the past, was want of popidar leaders; for, strange as it may 
seem, the people, as such, and distinguished from office-holders and 
seekers, are, and have been, more alive to their interests, and more 
ready to join any popular movement . to recover them, than our 
party leaders. The office-holders, and those who aspire to office, being 
the most active and forward, usually give direction to public action in 
all political matters : it is an unbroken chain from the Presidency down 
to Justice of the Peace. Those who are on the line of promotion to the 
highest office usually give out the cue to those who would take seats in 
the Cabinet, the Senate, and at foreign courts ; aspirants for the House 
of llcpresentatives and Gubernatorial honors fall into line at a mere nod 
or wink. It is amusing to see with what alacrity the innumerable army 
of men who feel qualified for seats in the Legislature conform. So with 
all the minor offices. But few persons, perhaps, have ever estimated 
what a swarm there always is of men looking to those several grades of 
office. How many such are there in your State, for instance, who think 
there is a reasonable probability, as parties stand, or as they would have 
them, of being chosen to the highest office in the gift of the people ; 
and are, therefore, upon the simple score of interest, opposed to breaking 
with their party? How many future Governors and Congressmen? 
How many whose hearts are fixed upon seats in the Legislature and 
magistrates' benches? How many who expect to be at the head of 
military companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions ? How 



THEDISUNIONIST. 19 

many would be sheriffs, clerks, and collectors of taxes ? Wliat a host ! 
Who can number them ? 

It is not that offices of sinister grades would not be to fill in a new 
government, but the breaking up of parties may give the wheel of 
fortune a sudden revolution, derange the men upon the chess-board, 
nay, bring to light a new set of men, with patriotism enough to yield 
their private inclinations and personal preferences, and serve the public 
merely to gratify their '' numerous friends." 

Such is "the machinery of party, and such the shackles that bind the 
will, and prevent the freedom of thought and action. 

It is a popular error of the country, to be governed and controlled too 
much by the counsels and opinions of men in office. Instead of think- 
ing for ourselves, we look to our file leaders. Take a member of Congress 
for illustration : many of them are of ability, but many others get to be 
such by log-rolling and juggling, who possess no elements of truly great 
statesmanship ; but whether he is wise or ignorant, compare his influence 
over the people of his district with that of some other citizen with equal 
talents and integrity. 

It is becoming in any people to respect those in authority ; and to 
obey where law requires it ; and to honor in their hearts, and in their 
outward deportment, those rulers who are wise and just. But it is not 
treason to inquire often into their claim to the title of wise, and the 
justice or injustice with which they govern. It is not unbecoming a 
free people to honor wisdom and intcgtity, to despise bigotry and 
arrogance, and to oppose error in office as well as out. 



CHAPTER V. 

SECTIONAL PARTY. 

An independent sectional party cannot affect the security of the 
South in the Union, even though it might hold the balance of power 
between the national parties, or even unite to itself the whole strength; 
because we are the weaker end of the confederacy, and cannot by united 
action carry any thing in Congress. The time was when, if, by united 
action, we had made disunion the penalty of a violation of our rights, 
and stood flat-footed and square-toed upon that platform, the aggressions 
may have been stayed for a longer period, and the goverment admin- 
istered for a long time according to the spirit of the Constitution. An 
independent sectional party North, composed of men who are willing- to 
forego the honors of office while in the minority, was a practical thing 
for their purposes : standing between the two, holding the balance of 
power, bidding for favors from each, and willing to act temporarily 
with that party which most conformed to their views, it gathered 
strength from the changes of public opinion, and the disaffected and 
disappointed of both parties, and finally fused with almost the entire 



20 THEDISUNIONIST. 

mass of one, and with a respectable minority, and in some places a ma- 
jority, of the other. It then became the dominant party North, and 
thereby of the Union. Such is the history and present enormous growth 
of the abolition party of the United States. 

That pai'ty was long in the formation state ; it required great lengih 
of time to take root and develop. So long as the political field North 
was cultivated by statesman who duly understood and properly appreci- 
ated the genius of our government, and the relations of the people to it, 
this noxious weed could not grow : it was stifled, and its growth con- 
stantly prevented. 

But at length the barriers gave way, and the flood-gates that had 
restrained the deluge broke up. And the rapidity of its growth may be 
seen by a comparison of the votes given for its candidates for the 
Presidency, commencing with its first race in 1840, when, in all the 
States where their first candidate was voted for at all, he only received 
7000 votes; in 1844, 62,000; in the year 1848 the vote reached 
296,000 ; in 1852, owing perhaps to the temporary quiet occasioned by 
their wonderful gains under the compromise of 1850, the vote fell back 
to 152,000. But in 1856 the vote of John C. Fremont was 1,341,812, 
nearly nine times as large as the vote of 1852. 

Who can control such an element? . Who can stay its ravages? 
Could the power of a virtuous and just Administration, if we had one at 
Washington, hold it in check ? As well might the antelope stand upon 
the prairies and bid defiance" to the raging, devouring flame ; or the 
feeble mariner undertake to bridle the winds that roll up the waves of 
the ocean : as well might those who kindled the fires have turned back 
with a common engine to extinguish the sea of flame that enveloped 
Moscow. There is no power upon the earth that can stay the rage of 
abolition, so long as slaveholders continue in union with them : that is 
the fuel that feeds the flame : it is the basis of party organization and 
the ground of political promotion. If the slaveholding States were 
withdrawn from them, that state of things would instantaneously cease : 
there could then be no party North based upon opposition to slavery, 
when that institution was away from and wholly disconnected with 
their republic. They would then have free labor to their heart's con- 
tent : like a forest over which the fire has lately swept, it might smoke 
a while in the old stumps and deep rotten roots of decayed trees, but 
could no more blaze than did the fatal city of Moscow after the last piece 
of its timber was consumed. 

CHECKS OF GOVERNMENT. 

We are advised by our Union frien'ds, that although the House of 
Representatives, the branch of government sent directly from the peo- 
ple, is abolition, the Senate is sound, and, therefore, acts as a check 
upon the House ; and that the President is sound, and a check upon 
both ; and that the Supi-eme Court of the United States is a reliable 
tribunal, and is a check in the last resort ; that no obnoxious measure 
can pass Congress without the concurrence of the Senate ; and that 
should such pass both Houses of Congress, it would not pass into a law 
without either a vote of two-thirds of Congress or the sanction of the 



THEDISUNIONIST. 21 

President ; and that, in the last resort, the Supreme Court would set 
aside any uuconstitutioaal law, when a proper case of litigation under 
the law is made by suit before that tribunal, in which the constitutional 
validity of that law is put in issue by the pleadings. 

That is all good logic, and reads well upon paper, and might work 
out well in practice, if the South were only installed in her rights ; then 
the Senate might, if it continued to stand as it is, interpose its check, 
and prevent any inroads being made hy Congress upon us. ^ But the 
misfortune is, our condition is that of inequality and subordination, as we 
shall hereafter show, and requires action ; which action cannot be had 
without the concurrence of the House of Representatives. That body 
holds a check upon the Senate : the President can only approve, and the 
Supreme Court adjudge, a law. That check will always be interposed 
to arrest the passage of any law which looks to our restoration to equality 
of rights and burdens in the government. The South needs not pros- 
trating by acts of aggression ; what she needs is to have the previous 
agoressions removed": she is already down — taxed by unequal revenue 
laws, circumscribed, shut out of the Territories by congressional, execu- 
tive, and other interventions. What more could they ask than to let the 
burdens rest where they have placed them ? let the chains of slavery 
and degradation gall where they have bound them. 

But "these checks — good in principle, but worthless to us under the 
peculiar circumstances' of our case — how long are they to last ? The 
nest census-decade and presidental election will take place in 1860. 
There they stand before you, good people of the South ; the Scylla of 
executive power against 3^ou on the one hand, and Charybdis of constitu- 
tional numerical strength on the other. Does any one hope for the 
election of a President who will check, if he could, the aggressive spirit 
of the North upon the South '/ But suppose his hopes realized by the 
election of the safest man in the Union for the South. Look over the 
vast expanse of Northwestern territory, into which this freesoil popu- 
lation are spreading like an Exodus ; piloted over the Western wilds,_ as 
it were, bv the whistle of the railroad engine, whose track goes up like 
magic out" of the public fund of property: can you doubt what will be 
the" representative power of that party '/ 

Then can we expect our members of Congress, whether true or false 
to us, whether honest or dishonest, to restore us to equal power ? To do 
so is to satisfy ourselves by asking an impossibility at their hands. If 
the South could live upon arguments alone ; if we could subsist upon 
"all talk" and no land; if such as that were a sufficient return for the 
enormous outlay of money we pay to support the government, certainly 
the masterly and unanswerable productions of Mr. Toombs alone, upon 
the territorial question, to say nothing of those of other distinguished 
members of Congress during the late session, ought to satisfy our appetites 
for years to come. What a pity, indeed, it is to waste such noble ammu- 
nition in pursuit of such worthless game; to exhaust the powers of such 
men in the vain effort to keep the frail bark of this Union afloat ! 



22 THE DISUNIONIST. 

CHAPTER VI. 

EMPLOYMENTS, PRODUCTS, AND RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH. 

The paramount and controlling interest of the Northern people con- 
sists in manufacturing and carrying. It is true that there are other vast 
interests there, but they are, and for a long time have been, and are 
likely to remain, subordinate. That of the Southern people, with slight 
exceptions, consists in agriculture. 

The total number of vessels built in the Southern States, of all classes, 
for the year ending June 30th, 1855, was 351, of only 40,701 tons, 
22,522 tons, above half of which, was constructed in the State of Mary- 
laud alone. 

The number of vessels built in the Northern States for the same year 
was 1673, of 542,739 tons — 'nearly five times the number and above 
thirteen times the tons. 

By reference to a few average examples, a just conception may be had 
of the difference in the ratio, North and South, between the exports of 
domestic produce and imports of foreign goods. The examples will con- 
vev an idea of the domestic products of the different States referred to, 
but not of their consumption of foreign goods, as many articles are im- 
ported in Northern vessels into Northern ports, and sold and consumed 
in the South ; but they will show something of the carrying and trans- 
porting interests of those States. 

Exports and Imports for the year ending June ZOth, 1855. 

States. Exports. Imports. 

Maine, 8 2,.500,000 . . .^ 2,900,000 

Massachusetts, .... 24,400,000 . . . 45,100,000 

New York, 96,400,000 . . . 167,700,000 

Pennsylvania, .... 5,900,000 . . . 15,300,000 

Vermont, 322,000 . . . .501,000 

South Carolina, .... 12,600,000 . . . 1,500,000 

Georda, 7,500,000 . . . 27^3,000 

Alabama, 14,270,000 . . . 619,000 

Florida, 1,400,000 . . . 45,000 

Louisiana, 55,056,000 . . . 12,900,000 

By which it will readily appear that the exports of the Southern States 
immensely exceed their imports, and vice versa of the Northern States. 

It is proper to add that many of the products of Northern factories, 
instead of being exported, are sold to the South ; and many of the pro- 
ducts of the soil of the South, instead of being exported, are sold to the 
people of the North. It is also true, as stated, that we buy from them 
many of their imported articles; upon which facts rest very serious com- 
plaints, one of which is, that we do buy and pay enormous prices for 
the protected products of Northern factories ; competition from abroad 
being obstructed by the duties imposed by our government upon the im- 
portations of similar articles, which are the products of foreign factories. 
Another complaint arises from the fact that, instead of exporting our 



THEDISUNIONIST. 23 

produce directly to foreign markets, and importing direct such articles 
of the products of foreign countries as we need, we pay Northern ships 
to carry our produce around by Northern cities to the markets abroad, 
and pay their shippers to bring back our imports by the same route, and 
their merchants enormous profits, and the profits of every sharper 
through whose hands they pass, until they reach the consumer, who 
pays all the profits imposed, in addition to repaying the duty paid by the 
importer at the custom-house of the United States for the privilege of 
bringing in the goods. But more of these subjects when we come to 
speak of them under their appropriate heads. We are compelled to 
go back to 1850 for a general census report, which is supposed to be a 
fair illustration of the subjects referred to, allowing what is reasonable for 
increase or diminution from that time to this. 

In 1850, $4,300,000 worth of rice, exclusively Southern product, 
grew in the United States. And of the §11,985,159 worth of tobacco 
of that year, $10,058,479 grew in the five Southern States of Virginia, 
Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and a large proportion 
of the balance grew in the South. The whole production of tubacco 
North, for that year, was only about one-fifth that of the single State of 
Virginia. The entire crop of hemp that year was of the value of 
84,184,520, of which only 623,750 grew in the North. The proportion 
of flax of the same year is almost as great as that of hemp in favor of the 
South. Of the 237,133,000 pounds of cane-sugar of the same j^ear, not 
a pound is reported from a Northern State. Maple-sugar was produced 
that year in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisi- 
ana, Maryland, Missouri, North and South Carolina, and largely in 
Virginia, although a very large majority of the crop was of Northern 
growth. The entire crop of maple-sugar that year was 34,253,436 
pounds, about one-eighth in quantity of that of cane-sugar. Of the 
11,700,991 gallons of molasses of that year, nearly 11,000,000 were 
produced in the single State of Louisiana, and most of the balance in 
the other Southern States. 

The crop of peas and beans of 1850 was 9,219,901 bushels, of whieh 
5,525,920 bushels grew in the States of Georgia, Mississippi, North and 
South Carolina, and a large proportion of the balance in other Southern 
States. 

The articles of Irish and sweet potatoes, Indian corn, rye, oats, and 
wheat flourish in great abundance both North and South, and the sta- 
tistics show but little, if any, advantage in either section over the other 
in their growth. 

Barley, buckwheat, hops, hay, wool, wine, and dairy products, are in 
far greater abundance in the Northern States j although many of them 
are largely produced, and all of them practicable, in the South. 

The fisheries are almost exclusively a source of gain to the Northern 
States. Of the $10,000,000 yielded from that source in 1850, only 
8113,000 were in the South, and these small operations were confined to 
the States of Virginia and Florida. In the products of the forest, such 
as lumber, bark, tar, pitch, turpentine, and rosin, skins and furs; also 
in the products of cattle and swine, such as beef, tallow, bacon, and lard; 
also in coal and mineral wealth and fruits, both sections of the Union 



24 THEDISUNIOXIST. 

abound, iu srroater or less proportion. In the articles of skins and furs 
the North, by reason of its advantages in the Territories, has the advan- 
tage. It is also said that in most respects their timber is better than 
ours. Our brethren of the North, being nearer the frigid zone, enjoy a 
natural advantage in the ice trade. 

But there is an article indigenous to Southern soil, of which we are 
sole proprietors, and which alone is capable of greater control over the 
commerce and peace of the world than any other; yea, than almost all 
others combined. For while the articles above named, many of them, 
are consumed by the producer, cotton is an article of exportation, and is 
grown almost exclusively for market. 

In 1856 the United States exported of iron and steel and manufactures 
thereof; raw and manufactured wool; manufactures of cotton, silk, and 
hemp, and manufactures of all kinds, (Yankee notions et id ovine <jenns,') 
the sum of ^11,200,000 ; of rice and tobacco, 815,.500,000 ; of breadstuffs, 
$77,000,000; products of the sea and forest, ^14,000,000; and other 
raw products, $8,000,000 ; making in all §120,000,000. The exports of 
cotton alone for that year amounted to the sum of 8128,000,000 ; to 
which add the sura of 8o.5, 000,000 sold to Northern factories, making 
$163,300,000, (all of which would be exported to foreign countries if we 
were separated from the North,) all grown of one commodity; all pro- 
duced in the South over and above her supports of breadstuffs, and her 
large share of the other articles of export. What are the Southern 
States worth to the world annually ? Here we have it in dollars and 
cents iu the single article of cotton, leaving out the enormous supplies 
we furnish of other products. How masterly independent might we not 
be if we only knew our power, and had we the nerve to assert our rights! 
How "shorn of our locks" to be tied down to such a set of brethren as 
we have North ! 

The Northern States exceed us far in the business of manufac- 
turing. 

In 1850 the manufactures of wool in the United States reached the 
sum of 813,000,000, only about §2,000,000 of which was in the South. 
They produced of pig-iron about $9,000,000 to our about $3,000,000; 
of wrought-iron about $19,000,000 to our about $3,000,000; of castings 
about $21,000,000 to our about $4,000,000; of manufactures of cotton 
$53,000,000 to our $8,000,000; products of breweries and distilleries 
about $16,000,000 to our about $2,000,000; of manufactures produced 
in families about $9,000,000 to our about $18,000,000, in which last 
item it will appear that the scale is largely changed in our favor, show- 
ing the comparative industry of our ladies with that of Northern ladies 
in families; and, taking into consideration the great majority of their 
population over ours, it shows how much our women work to manufac- 
ture the articles they use in their families, and how little those of the 
Northern States, out of the factories, produce of their own domestic 
articles. Well, we are a great people, indeed ! We submit to be taxed 
by the North to make us poor and them rich ; to make our ladies slaves 
to toil, and give theirs elegant leisure ! There is no class of the South 
more eminently interested in disunion than our wives and daughters and 
mothers. If they only knew the truth and felt the oppression as it is, 



THEDISUNIONIST. 25 

it is hoped that the lords of Southern soil would soon find their courage 
stimulated to throw off the yoke of the oppressors. 

The statistics of the Northern compared with the Southern States 
might be indefinitely prolonged, which would only be cumulative evi- 
dence of the great leading propositions which seem to be already sus- 
tained by proof, that, in the main, the Southern are an agricultural 
and producing people; and that the Northern are a manufacturing, 
trading, and transporting people. It is true, the Northern States are 
capable of, and actually do, produce by agriculture many of the com- 
forts and luxuries of life, both for home consumption and market, and 
that the people of the South do manufacture for home use, and send 
abroad, many articles. But the leading cnaracteristics and contruUing 
interests are as above stated. 

It may be noted as an interesting fact, that of all the products of the 
country, either of the soil or the mines, the South is fully capable and 
abounding; while there are many leading articles which our Northern 
brethren cannot produce at all. It is also true that the North has 
no natural advantages of the South in the facilities for manufactures ; 
she enjoys the advantage of the destitution and poverty and dependence 
of her lower classes, enabling their rich lords and masters to procure 
labor at low prices. Our poor people are too independent, have too many 
resources and expedients at hand to earn a living, to work in a factory, 
unless they are paid for it well, with now and then an exception. 

Should we ever be driven to manufacturing, our water-power and fuel 
for steam-power are unsurpassed in the world; while we have the 
advantage of the raw material at hand of some articles, which the 
Northern people have now to buy from us to keep up their factories. 

It is also gratifying to our pride to notice that, with not much above 
one-third of the entire population of tlie United States and Territories, 
and with only four of the eleven billions of dollars of real and personal 
property, we furnish nearly two-thirds of the entire exports of the country; 
and, in addition, furnish a large portion to the Northern factories, which 
raw material, when manufactured, enters largely into the items of what 
they export. 

If the United States is valuable to the world, and their friendship worth 
cultivating at all, it must be on account of what they produce for and buy 
from other countries. If that is true, and our statistics any thing nearly 
correct, the simplest-minded man in the whole country can see that its 
greatest value then is our section. We are not only valuable to other 
nations, but eminently so to the North, independent of the annual tribute 
we pay her. Further, we have no competition to the manufacturing or 
transporting interests of other countries. But the North does in both. 
Hence, in a separate government we would be courted and they avoided. 

It cannot be doubted that the civilized world would be interested in 
our friendship. But if the experiment of war should be resorted to by 
any nation; if there be any that think they can do without our products 
long enough to put us to the trial of valor; does any remain so full of 
prejudice, or empty of brains, as to doubt that with four billions of dollars 
of property, and ten Uiillions of as brave people as live upon the earth, 
with negroes enough to raise cotton for the world, breadstuffs for liumo, 



26 THE DISUNIONIST. 

army, and navy, while the war is peadiog, we could make a successful 
defence ? 

But who, with a knowledge of all the fiicts, can remain so simple as to 
suppose a power in the world that would desire our subjugation ? Would 
it be the Northern llepublic ? For what purpose, and with what motive? 
Once sever the compact of Union, and purge their squeamish consciences 
of "the national sin of African slavery," over which their people have 
been so much excited; deprive them of the power to fleece us by the 
unequal and unjust appropriation of the common funds and common bur- 
dens, and these subjects would cease to be elements in their politics. 
They would then no more be heard of there than now in England, where 
the people with one accord have been opposed to slavery. The unjust 
prejudice they cherisli now, under the incendiary publications and 
speeches of political leaders, and the falsehoods and slanders that are 
daily heaped upon us, would cease. They then, instead of answering 
for our consciences, and what they are pleased to call our sins, would 
have to settle their own affairs and attend to their own business. It 
would then, instead of being an element in their political organizations, 
be a cold calculation, in dollars and cents, as to what the institution of 
slavery is worth, not to us, but to them. If they did not find it valuable, 
which they undoubtedly would, they would have neither money, blood, 
nor leisure to spare to make war upon the South. 

The same is true of any power that would be formidable to us in war. 
Instead of incurring war by separation from the North, it would diminish 
the chances for that dreadful catastrophe tenfold. We have shown that 
most of the maritime and shipping interests of the United States belong 
to the North. Of course nearly the whole chapter of accidents for a 
state of war, with commercial nations, rests in the conflicts of the shipping 
interests. If that were cut off, it is plain that there would be but little 
grounds to fear war with any power: our agricultural products and 
interests will insure peace, while the North's maritime interest places 
them in constant hazard. If we wish to avoid war, and live in peace 
with the whole world for the next century, our plan is to organize a new 
government, covering the agricultural, and leaving oif the maritime 
interests. When the expense of a war with a foreign power is taken 
into the count, waged as it would be to protect Northern ships, and the 
account taken of what part of it the South will have to pay, it will be 
seen at once that upon that score alone we are infinitely interested in 
dissolving the Union. But the true glory of our position would be, that 
we are impregnable to any force that can be sent against us. We could 
live an age upon our own products, have the wealth to support armies, 
(which we could support annually by the tribute we now pay the North,) 
and we have fighting men enough to repel any power or combination of 
powers. 



THE DISUNIONIST. 27 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE EXPENSE OP GOVERNMENT — AT WHOSE EXPENSE THE MONEY IS 
RAISED, AND FOR WHOSE BENEFIT EXPENDED. 

For the year ending June 30th, 1856, the whole receipts of the 
United States Treasury amounted to ^73,918,141 46; of which 
§9,917,644 93, was from the sale of public lands, and the sum of 
§977,633 03 from incidental and miscellaneous sources; and the balance, 
the enormous sum of §64,022,863 50, arose from the receipts of customs, 
which means the tax or duty imposed by our government upon articles 
imported from foreign countries, which tax is paid for the privilege of 
bringing in the articles, and is usually called the tariif. To show how 
this money is raised and paid out is the object of this chapter. In 
order to bring the remarks down to the comprehension of all, it may be 
excusable to premise some general rules and principles, with which the 
more intelligent reader is supposed to be already familiar. When any 
class or section of our people are in the habit of producing for market 
any given article, and the same article is produced for market in any 
foreign country that carries on commerce with us, it begets competition 
between the two sets of producers of that article as to the sale of it. 
Each seeks to sell the article to and supply such of our people as do not 
produce it. By the laws of the United States, the people can transport 
goods and property of every kind (except slaves) from one section to an- 
other, and from one State to another, without having to pay any tax or 
tariff" for the privilege of introducing and selling the goods. If those 
producing the goods" in other countries did not have to pay any tax or 
tariff" for the privilege of bringing in and selling their goods, the compe- 
tition would be on equal terms ; and those who wish to buy the_ article 
could, at their option, apply to whichever off"ered the best bargain, in price 
or quality. But when this tax is imposed upon the foreigner for the 
privilege of bringing in his goods, he has to add that tax, whatever it be, 
to the price of his goods before he off"ers them for sale, and it raises the 
price to the buyer just whatever the tax amounts to. That gives the 
home producer of that class of goods an advantage over the foreign pro- 
ducer just to the extent of the tax imposed on the latter. The effect is, 
if the tariff is so high as to exclude the foreign goods altogether, it gives 
a monopoly or exclusive privilege to the home producer of that class of 
goods, and of course the privilege to ask and receive his own price for 
them. The effect of the tariff in that case is to exclude foreign goods 
from our markets, and to enrfch the home producer at the expense of the 
home consumer, by cutting off all competition. That is what is called a 
prohibitive tariff. Of course a prohibitive tariff raises no tax to the 
government, because nothing comes in to be taxed. Therefore, this 
government long since found it necessary to abandon that system. 

In lieu of the prohibitive system we have what is called a revenue 
tariff", which means a tax imposed upon the importation of foreign goods, 
not so high as to exclude them, but low enough to induce the foreign pro- 
ducer to1)ring in his goods and pay the tax. That tax is paid at the 



28 THE DISUNION 1ST. 

custom-houses where the goods are brought in, and is collected by United 
States officers and paid into the United States Treasury, and is called 
revenue, which revenue or money belonjis to the government. 

When a foreigner or American importer brings in his goods and pays 
the tax, he adds the sura paid at the custom-house to the price of his 
"■oods, or the price for which he could have afforded them without the 
tax. Although the importer pays the revenue duty at the custom-house, 
still it comes out of the pocket of the man who ultimately buys the goods 
to use or consume. 

This tariff, imposed upon the importation of goods from abroad, and 
which the home producer does not have to pay, enables him to raise the 
price of his goods of the same class, quality, and value, just to the extent 
of that tariff. So in any case, whether we buy foreign imported goods 
with the tariff added to the price of them, or the articles made in the 
country at a price advanced in consequence of the tariff, the evil is the 
same, and the expense of the operation is paid by the consumer. 

Hence it may be incontestably asserted that all tariffs or taxes upon 
foreio-n goods are advantageous to the American producer of the article 
upon which it is levied, and disadvantageous to the American consumer 
of that article, in proportion to the extent of the tariff or tax imposed. 

This is class legislation, and injurious and onerous to those against 
whom the discrimination is made in proportion to the extent to which it 
is carried. If it is only one cent in a million of dollars' worth, it is 
wrong to that extent. If it is twenty-four cents in the dollar, it is wrong 
to that extent. 

Take, for example, the article of iron, which, under the Tariff Act of 
1857, (see vol. 1 Brightley's Digest, page 346,) pays twenty-four per cent. 
ad valorem. If a farmer in (ieorgia wishes to buy one hundred dollars' 
worth of iron to make axes to fell the trees, wedges to split the rails, and 
ploughs and hoes to till the soil, should he choose to buy it from England, 
he cannot get it at the Liverpool price, with the cost of transportation 
and the profits of the importing merchant added, making one hundred 
dollars, laid down to him in New York or Savannah j but he has to pay, 
in addition thereto, the twenty-four dollars which the importer paid at 
the custom-house for the privilege of bringing in the iron, which, added 
to one hundred dollars, makes his iron cost him one hundred and twenty- 
four dollars. No farmer in Georgia would give the Pennsylvania^ iron 
producer one hundred and twenty-four dollars for his lot of iron, if he 
could get Jthe same article from England for one hundred dollars. The 
Pennsylv;xnia iron-man will not sell to the Georgia farmer the lot of 
iron for one hundred dollars, when, in consequence of the tariff, he knows 
it cannot be had from England for less ttan one hundred and twenty- 
four dollars. In that case the amount of advantage or protection to the 
iron-man is twenty-four dollars, and the disadvantage suffered and the 
tril)ute paid by the Georgia farmer is twenty-four dollars. If he buy the 
English iron, his twenty-four dollars is paid to the government; if he 
bought the home article, it is a tribute authorized by that government — 
by Georgia to Pennsylvania. This example of iron is not peculiar, and 
we shall see as we progress who pay the government revenue and the 
tribute. Our system of raising revenue by tariff is called ad valorem, 



THE DISUNIONIST. 29 

which means that a per cent, is levied upon the value of the article im- 
ported. The former system imposed a cei-tain tax upon the importation 
of an article, regardless of its value, which was called a specihc tariff. 
In regard to the ad valorem system of duties, it may be said, if it is 
right to raise revenue by duties upon imports at all, instead of direct 
taxes, the ad valorem system would approximate justice and equality, if 
two things existed, which never have, and are never likely to exist, in 
this country. 

First, if we were all either a manufacturing or an agricultural people, 
its burdens would bear something like equally upon all, in which case 
it would matter not to the people whether they paid the necessary revenue 
to support the government to a tax collector, or in the price of the goods 
they buy. 

Second. If the same per centum tax were imposed upon all articles of 
goods imported; if it were not only ad valorem, but uniform in its 
operation. 

The ad valorem or according-to-value system, which our government 
practices, instead of being uniform, and imposing the same per cent, upon 
all articles brought in, imposes upon some articles thirty per cent. — that 
is, thirty dollars upon every hundred dollars' worth brought in ; upon other 
articles, twenty-four per cent.; and the scale slides as low as four per 
cent., and even down to nothing, for many articles are let in free of 
duty. 

In whose favor is the discrimination made? Is it in favor of the 
North or the South? The answer is contained in the solution of the 
question, whether it is in favor of the agriculturist or the manufacturer. 
If in favor of the former, the North is cheated; and if it is in favor of 
the latter, the South is cheated. We are not left to conjecture to arrive 
at it : the articles are all put down in the schedule, and the per centum 
fixed by law, which each class of articles shall pay that are imported — 
that is, if our premises be correct, how much the producer for market 
of each article shall be benefited or protected, and how much injury or 
burden shall be imposed by government upon whoever consumes that 
class of goods. 

It may be safely asserted that no government can be strictly just upon 
equitable principles, which purposely, and without good consideration, 
gives one citizen, or class, or section of citizens, advantages over another 
citizen, class, or section of citizens. It is equally unjust when, without 
malfeasance, or misfeasance, or any other cause of forfeiture, greater 
burdens are imposed upon one person, or class, or section of persons, 
than other persons, or classes, or sections of persons have to bear. The 
law, when properly administered, is intended to protect life and limb. 
Hence, the life and limb of one man should be as readily put in hazard 
for the common defence as another, and of one class as another, regard- 
less of place of residence, or pecuniary circumstances. The law is also 
intended to protect property, the right of the citizen to acquire, hold, 
enjoy, and alienate property without molestation or hindrance. The 
citizen who owns one million dollars' worth of property is supposed to 
be protected by government in property to that extent. He who owns 
one thousand dollars' worth of property is supposed to be protected in 



30 THE DISUNIONIST. 

property to that amount. He who owns not a dollar's worth of property 
is not protected in property to the amount of a dollar. 

The property of all the citizens, whether it consists in negroes and 
mules, or of lands and oxen, store-houses and goods, or of ships and 
steam-works, should bear equally of the collections taken up by govern- 
ment, OQ account of the protection it affords to the property of the citizen. 
Whenever there is a departure from this rule, there is discrimination. 
Discrimination is necessarily in favor of some, and against some, and is 
therefore unequal and unjust. And it is oppressive to the extent 
to which it is carried. 

The Tariff of 184G, modified by that of 1857, is supposed to be the 
best we have ever had. We may get a better one; but to suppose we 
can get an equal system of revenue laws, is to suppose that Northern 
Representatives in Congress would turn to be honest to the whole 
country, which implies faithlessness to their constituents; or, to suppose, 
what is still more improbable, that Southern members should by some 
kind of magic attain a majority in Congress, and cease to aspire to 
higher honors, such as require the favor of Northern people. 

It would weary the reader to go through the entire schedule of this 
tariff. We will take a few leading items. 

Those persons in this country who produce wines and spirituous 
liquors are not the purchasers of their own goods, or those of like 
kind brought from other countries. Those who do not produce those 
articles in this country are the purchasers of all that are sold in the 
country, either of foreign or American production, and of course pay all 
the revenue to government that is raised from the importation of wines 
and liquors. They pay also a tribute in the advanced price of all such 
as they buy of the home production. The same is true of all other 
articles upon which there is a tariff. We have seen by a report of a given 
year, 1850, the latest census report, that the North that year produced 
§16,000,000 worth of those articles to the South's §2,000,000. The 
excess in favor of the North is §14,000,000, upon which the tariff, as it 
then stood, was one hundred per cent., which enabled them to sell that 
§14,000,000 worth of liquors one hundred per cent, higher than they 
could have done if there had been no duty upon it. The present duty 
being thirty per cent., they could sell a corresponding quantity now 
thirty per cent, higher, in consequence of the tariff. Thirty per cent, 
upon §14,000,000"^ is §4,200,000. The tribute thus covertly but no 
less certainly levied by the producer upon the consumer, was therefore 
§4,200,000 that year (supposing the tariff only to have been thirty per 
cent.) on the items of wines and liquors. 

The articles of pig and wrouirht iron, and castings, were produced that 
year to the amount of §49,000,000 in the Northern, and §10,000,000 in 
the Southern States, the excess being §39,000,000, on which cLiss of 
articles the duty as it now stands is twenty-four per cent. The tribute 
paid by the consumer that year upon the excess in favor of the North 
upon these articles, at that rate of duty, was §0,406,000. 

The same year the manufactures of wool and cotton produced North 
amounted to §94,000,000, and §10,000,000 South. The duty on these 



THE D IS UNIONIST. 31. 

articles being twenty-four per cent., the tribute paid on the excess in 
favor of the North ou these amounts to §20,160,000. 

These amounts of tribute by the consumer are not all paid by the 
South, notwithstandini^ we have made the calculation from the excess in 
favor of the North. It must be held in memory, in order to form a just 
idea of the scheme as it affects the North and South, that many of the 
manufactured articles are sold to the Northern people : in that case they 
pay the tribute to their own manufacturers. Also, that a small portion 
of them are exported to foreign countries. The South pays the tribute 
on such as her people buy. 

For instance, in the year 1850, the total manufactures of the whole 
country amounted to §1,055,000,000. I have before me no report of the 
total exports of manufactures for that year, but suppose it was not 
greater than in 1856, when it only reached §11,200,000, which would 
leave a balance of §1,043,800,000, which sum, not being exported, was 
sold in the country — what part to the South, I have no means of making 
an accurate or reliable estimate. 

The particular items of manufactures taken above to illustrate the 
operations of the tariff" only amount to about one-fifth of the total manu- 
factures of the country. The several sums of tribute shown to be paid 
by the consumer to the producer of these articles have, when added to- 
gether, to be multiplied by five to show the total sum paid to that class 
of citizens (in addition to the revenue upon all such as they buy from 
foreign countries) by the consumers. The figures would amount to 
§188,830,000, tribute paid upon the excess of Northern manufactures by 
the people of the United States who are not engaged in these mamifac- 
turing interests, in one year. Let us suppose the South only pays one 
half, which is too liberal a calculation, the figures would stand §04,415,000. 
And this, they say, is the best tariff" we have ever had. Would that 
sum not support an army large enough to defend a Southern republic 
even in war'? 

But the iniquity and injustice of the tariff" does not stop at this. If a 
Georgia farmer wishes to buy a silk shawl for his wife, which silk was 
grown and manufactured abroad, the duty he has to pay is twenty-four 
per cent. ; while, if a Massachusetts manufacturer wishes to bring in 
the raw silk from abroad, to manufacture just such a shawl to sell to the 
Georgia planter, the duty he has to pay is only twelve per cent. And 
numerous such discriminations are made between the raw material needed 
to be worked up in Northern factories and the manufactured article, 
which enables them to get the raw material at low duties, while their 
manufactured articles are protected by high duties. 

That is not all. The Alabama planter pays twenty-four per cent, duty 
on the iron he buys to till the soil to make a bale of cotton. The XcW 
England man who manufactures it pays four per cent, onl}^ upon his dye- 
stuff's and chemicals used in the process of manufacturing, and some he 
gets free of duty; for instance, the article of madder. Such is the 
Tariff" of 1847. We would pursue it further, but its terms sicken the 
heart. 

We do not, however, feel authorized to shut down the curtain upon 



32 THE DISUNIONIST. 

the woeful picture of Southern wrongs without a brief allusion to the 
manner, and for whose benefit, these enormous revenues are jio id out. 

Why does the government need ^73,000,000 in one year ? What use 
is there for so much money ? 

This is a curious question to those who have not taken the trouble to 
examine the operations and detail of the government in its present vast- 
Dcss and rugged deformity. It is conceded evei-ywhere, and by all, that 
the government must have funds to pay off" its officers and employees, 
and to defray the many expenses to which it is incident; and that the 
people are justly bound to furnish that money, in consideration of the 
protection of the government. But how much money it needs and uses, 
and how much and how the money is paid out, and for whose benefit, are 
subjects of inquiry with which very many persons in this country are 
supposed not to be familiar. 

It would be too tedioiis to go through the entire subject; therefore 
the leading items only will be considered. The figures are taken from 
the official Report on Finance for 1855-56. For convenience in reading, 
round numbers are stated. 

To begin at the fountain-head. That freesoil Congress, that sits there 
at Washington to insult and slander the slaveholding States, cost that 
year the sum of §2,000,000. Just think of how much of the revenue of 
government is raised at the expense of the South, and how many more 
members are paid out of it from the North than South, and conceive how 
much money we pay their men to come to Washington, and stay for 
months at a time, and make speeches by the hour, teeming with de- 
traction and slander upon the people who are paying their wages. 

Under the head of '' Executive," which we suppose means the Presi- 
dent and Cabinet, and the long list of hangers-on at the Capitol, is set 
down the handsome little sum of §2,055,000. 

To the "Judiciary" was paid the sum of §1,228,000. The sum of 
§412,000 was paid out for the government of Territories, and survey of 
public lands dedicated to freesoil, preparatory to increasing freesoil 
power, and increasing the number of members in Congress to be paid at 
our expense. The sum of §3,618,000 was paid out to defray the ex- 
penses of intercourse with foreign nations, most of which intercourse is 
designed to advance the interest of Northern commerce, and protect 
Northern ships. 

Under the head of " Miscellaneous" there stands the sum of §15,739,000. 
Under this head are a great many items. For instance, the sum of 
$1,732,000 for "building and maintaining light-houses." Just think of 
that sum, expended in one year to enable Northern ships to conduct their 
business with safety ! 

The sum of §1,415,000 was expended that year for the building of 
" custom-houses," at which to collect this enormous revenue at our ex- 
pense. 

Expenses of " collecting the revenues from customs," §2,849,000. Tax 
the South to build their houses, and tax the South to pay their custom- 
house officers these enormous sums for collecting these enormous reve- 
nues ! Enough of Miscellaneous. We will look to the " Department of 
the Interior." 



THEDISUNIONIST. 33 

There was paid out under that head the sum of $3,872,000, of which 
the sum of $2,593,000 falls under the item of " Indian Department." 
Neat little sum that, to enable our Northern brethren to keep on good 
terms with the native Indians, and to settle the public lands quietly and 
without molestation from that source, the only source of much terror to 
our ancestors, while they keep Sharpe's rifles for the special comfort of 
Southern gentlemen who desire to enter upon those public lands, the 
common property of the United States ! Neat sum that is, collected 
mostly at our expense, and paid out mostly to induce the poor natives, 
from love or fear, to treat kindly our brethren of the ''Aid Societies I" 

How stands the War Department in account current with the govern- 
ment that yeai- — the year ending June 30, 1856, in profound peace? 
The first item under that head is", "Army proper," $12,488,000. Item 
third, "Fortifications and other works of defence," $1,209,000. And 
so on to the sum total, 816,948,000. Where employed, and whose in- 
terest to protect, were this army proper and these works of defence, if 
not on Northern soil, to protect Northern States and Territories ? Of 
course it is not meant exclusively so, but that a very large and over- 
whelming majority of these expenditures were Northern, and for North- 
ern interests. If it takes that much in peace, what will it not require 
of these custom duties out of our pockets to protect their immense bor- 
ders and coasts in time of war with an invading formidable foe ? We 
humbly trust that before the time comes to tax the South for such pur- 
pose, the North, that most gracious end of the Kepublic, may be left to 
take care of their own lands and people and ships and commerce. 

The disbursements of the navy for the year under consideration 
amounted in the whole to the sum of $14,077,000; the principal items 
of which are, "Navy proper," $4,296,000; "Increase, repairs, ordnance, 
and equipment, $2,953,000; "Navy yards," $1,848,000; "Steam mail- 
service," $1,399,000; "Six steam-frigates," $1,715,000. That money 
was paid out by the government in time of peace ; for what but to pro- 
tect and advance the commercial interests of the country ? We have 
already seen where the commercial interest resides. 

We' might pursue this inquiry still farther to great length and detail; 
we might" show how much was paid to the public debt, and for whose 
interest the public debt was contracted. Those who are disposed to 
make a full and complete investigation of the whole subject in detail will 
find the general proposition sustained, that while in the main the South 
pays the "expenses of government in addition to what she pays as a tri- 
bute to Northern manufacturers, in the price of goods, those revenues, 
when paid into the public treasury, are in the main disbursed for the 
benefit of the Northern end of the Union. If we are asked what would 
be right in lieu of this oppressive and iniquitous system, it may be 
suggested in answer, that a tax upon property, ad valorem and uniform, 
would approximate justice. Then the case would stand thus: The 
North owns seven out of the eleven billions of dollars of real and per- 
sonal property in the whole United States : then seven-elevenths would 
be her share of the burdens of government. If a poll-tax were also col- 
lected in addition to the tax upon property, the North's share would be 
greatly increased, on account of her large majority of polls to be taxed. 
3 



34 THE DISUNIONIST. 

Although we might not get back our clue proportion of the spoils and 
benefits of the government, it surely would meliorate our condition much 
if we were only required to pay our pro-rata of its burdens. 

But we are wedded to the Llnion, bound by the spell of love and devo- 
tion to the government, for no other reason than that it is the government 
our fathers made when they came out of their bondage to the British 
crown, and is cotemporary in origin with the liberties of the country. 
The Union and our liberties are associated in memory, and we have not 
learned to separate them in our thoughts. We believe the Union is of 
great value because we value liberty. We conclude that the Union 
ought to be maintained, not because truth and justice so dictate, but be- 
cause we have heard all our lives that it is sacred, and its value ought 
not even to be calculated. We refuse to be taught the great truth that 
our liberties can be preserved without the Union, and that the Union 
cannot be preserved with our liberties. We are so far gone in our vene- 
ration for the Union as to cast out as evil the names of those who warn 
us of the danger that awaits us in the Union. We have been in the 
habit of calling them ''disappointed ofl&ce-seekers," "ambitious fanatics," 
and such other unpleasant epithets as a blind devotion to the Union 
might suggest. But, gentle reader, the song of the siren has been long 
enough heeded. That North to which we have been wedded is a great 
vampire, that fans us to sleep by agitating the question of African 
slavery, while he sucks our blood through every pore by this infamous 
tariff. 

Tell us that you do not individually feel the oppression of which we 
speak. Nay, you do not; and there lies the danger. We have shown 
you that under the reduced tariff you pay twenty-four dollars upon eveiy 
hundred dollars' worth of iron : make the calculation by that data upon 
all the goods you buy, and see if it amounts to any thing; and when you 
get the figures footed up, then suppose that, instead of paying the money 
in the price of your goods, you wei-e called on annually by a United 
States tax collector, and had to pay it all at once. Then consider that 
the very mode of collecting not only impoverishes you, but protects and 
enriches the North, and to a very great extent relieves them from the 
payment of any tax at all. Then think of how the scale slides down 
when it comes to articles the Northern people wish to import, and up 
when it comes to articles made in other countries which they also have 
to sell and we wish to buy. Then consider that the money, when it is 
thus unrighteously taken from your pockets, is disbursed upon Northern 
interests — to build up their power, while it weakens yours; to enable 
them to wind their coils around you and crush you to the earth. It ia 
not for you, under these facts, to indulge the fear that they will at some 
future day make themselves paramount, and you subordinate, but to 
learn the humiliating truth that they are now the United iStates and we 
are the tributaries. If it be treason to denounce such a Union, then 
glorious is the traitor's doom. 

If the British government should set up a right to levy upon ours 
one hundredth part of the tribute the South annually pays the North, 
and should attempt to enforce such a claim, and to that end should 
summon to her aid the allied powers of the whole world, the ocean, like 



THEDISUNIONIST. '35 

magic, would speckle with hostile sails, and the fish of every sea on the 
clobe drink of the blood of American freemen for the next hundred 
years, before we would submit to pay it. The tax never would be paid. 
The conquerors — if such an idea can enter and be conceived in the mind 
of an American at all — the conquerors might ultimately take the soil in 
payment ; but they would find it enriched by the blood and bones of a 
brave but extinguished race. We justly glory in our freedom from en- 
croachment abroad. But, humiliating thought, we are enslaved at home ; 
and by a government working under, or rather upon the ruins of, a 
charter ordained by the very fathers of liberty. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ANTI-SLAVERY AGGRESSIONS. 

As early as 1790 the anti-slavery agitation began in Congress, in the 
form of petitions from the Quakers and Friends of Pennsylvania and 
New York, praying the abolition of the African slave-trade. At that 
dim distance in the history of the country it is seen, and it resembles a 
small speck upon the ocean, or a small cloud upon the clear sky of 
American politics. 

At the very inception of the movement, the clear-headed men of the 
South, jealous of their dearly bought liberties, made their opposition to 
it. There stood Messrs. Smith, Tucker, and Burke, of South Carolina, 
and Baldwin and Jackson, of G-eorgia, who opposed even a reference of 
the petitions. (See Cluskey's Political Text Book.) 

Mr. Stone, a member from the State of Maryland, said, " He depre- 
cated the disposition of religious sects to imagine they understood the 
rights of human nature better than all the world beside; and that, in 
co'nsequence, they were found meddling with concerns with which they 
had nothing to do. He would never consent to refer petitions unless 
the petitioners were exclusively interested." 

Had that wise suggestion — of denying people the political right to 
meddle with the domestic concerns of others, in which they were not 
only not exclusively but not interested at all — been heeded and abided, 
what a calm this country would have enjoyed compared with what its 
history shows I At that early day it is supposed that nothing short of 
the gift of inspiration could have foretold i\\e vast consequences that 
have resulted from so small a beginning. Hence the great necessity of 
resisting the slightest departure from the true principles of government. 
Straight lines that are strictly parallel will never diverge or run together, 
although they may be extended around the entire globe. If they 
diverge at the beginning only one millionth part of a hair's breadth to the 
foot, they will not continue equidistant, but they will continue to widen 
with their extension in distance, and in proportion to the degree of 
divero-ence at the beginning. 



36 • THE DIS UNIONIST. 

So it is witli the acliniuistration of the government under the Consti- 
tution. If its principles had not been departed from in letter or spirit, 
all the reserved rights of the people strictly maintained, like parallel 
lines, the interests of the different sections never could have conflicted. 
From those slight departures at the beginning, resisted by some, and 
advocated and defended by others less wise but equally honest, have 
erown up the great evils of which we complain. Even James Madison, 
of Virginia, advocated the reception and reference of abolition petitions, 
while the great Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, presided at a 
Quaker anti-slavery petition meeting, and headed their petition to Con- 
sress. In those early days of the republic there were men, even from 
the North, who, understanding and feeling the necessity of resisting the 
slightest departure from the true line, opposed these petitions. 

From the subject of the slave-trade the petitions extended and em- 
braced slavery in the District of Columbia. The agitation continued to 
spread and take deeper hold of the feelings of the Northern people. 
Advocacy and defence of the right of petition begat hatred to slavery 
and its friends : it became a mania in the Northern States, upon which 
fed and grew a new school of statesmen : they began to resist the 
admissiou'of new States which tolerated slavery. The stream of aboli- 
tion petitions increased in volume and power with the distance from its 
source. 

As early as 1836, while Mr. Buchanan denounced in unmeasured 
terms the anti-slavery agitation and the motives of those who stirred It 
up, still he was in favor of receiving the petition ; while the great sage of 
Ashland, whose patriotism cannot be doubted, manfully resisted the 
agitation, but defended the right of petition: Mr. Calhoun, whose 
superior wisdom is more visible in history than it was to his contempo- 
raries, resisted the reception of the petition. He denounced them 
because they aimed at a " violation of the Constitution,"_aud because 
he was averse to an agitation which would " sunder the Union." 

The agitation of the question in reference to the Territories furnished 
a more extended theatre, and a more fruitful field for excitement and 
animosity. Then it was that the South fell never to rise, unless she 
does in the might of a separate republic. The fatal day for us was when 
our statesmen conceived the idea of what they were pleased to call com- 
promise, that misnamed, unconstitutional surrender of our equality iu 
the Union. Compromise ! It is a falsehood and libel upon the history 
of the country. There never has been one upon the subject of the 
Territories between the North and South. 

Compromise implies mutual concession. When did the North ever 
relinquish any thing ? Never. The time never was when of right the 
people of the North could occupy the public land, or one foot of it, with 
their property, to the exclusion of the people of the South with theirs. 
Both were of right entitled to equal privileges. What was property in 
Greorgia, the Constitution recognized everywhere — it was property iu the 
Territories as well as in the States. The North did not claim to occupy 
a part and yield to us a part; they claimed to occupy all and exclude us 
from all : upon such groundless and most absurd claim the dispute 
arose. What' was called a compromise not only did not exclude the 



THEDISUNIONIST. 37 

people of the Xortli from a single foot of the public lands, and the right 
to occupy them with anj^ property they chose, but did not even exclude 
them from the like privileges in the slaveholding States. Nor did it guar- 
antee, or in any manner secure or promote, the right of the people of the 
South to occuj^y a single foot of the Territories with their property; but 
left the small strip, from which the South was not peremptorily excluded, 
open, as it stood before, to be squabbled for. Thus it stood. The North 
never yielded her right to go into any State or Territory, North or South, 
with any kind of property; and never secured the right of the people of 
the South permanently to occupy an acre of laud in the Territories with 
their property; while the South were shut out from all the Northern 
States and five.sixths of the Territories. And all the right the South 
had was the privilege of squabbling with freesoilers for "the privilege, 
not of driving out them, but remaining themselves in the other one- 
sixth, which right we had before in all the Territories. • Was that a 
compromise ? If it was, what did the North yield ? Nothing in letter, 
nothing in spirit. 

To illustrate the effect of this compromise further, let us suppose two 
persons, A. and B., by equal outlay of money or labor, buy a tract of 
laud containing one hundred and twenty acres. By mutual consent a 
fence is built across the tract and cuts off twenty acres, leaving one 
hundred acres upon the other side of the fence. A. says to B., I o-q 
upon the one hundred acres and occupy there for all purposes I choose, 
and the twenty acres are left open to you. Upon my one hundred acres 
you are never to come upon any pretext; you are never to cross that line 
with your property, on pain of losing property and all. I am exclusive 
proprietor of the one hundred acres. I am also to go upon your twenty 
acres when and for whatever purpose I choose, and am never to be ex- 
cluded from it. Further, if you go upon the twenty acres which is left 
open to you, it is with the distinct understanding that I am to have the 
privilege, even after you have put valuable improvements on it, to come 
over there with powder and ball and Sharpe's rifles, and run you off, and 
take all — land, improvements, and every thing ; and if I kill you in the 
operation, it shall be justifiable homicide. This is an ambrotype of our 
compromising, except the case put supposes an equal outlay to buy the 
land.^ If we say B. paid two-thirds of the purchase-money, and then 
submitted to the terms that A. proposed, B. will then represent the 
course of the South in reference to the Territories. 

The Louisiana purchase, upon the coming in of the State of Missouri, 
was compromised upon that principle. The same rule was applied to 
the State of Texas upon her admission. And to keep peace and save 
the Union, the South offered to run the same line through the land we 
got from Mexico to the Pacific ocean, and to settle the dispute as to that 
upon the same principle. And the North did most insolently refuse the 
offer. The South furnished more of the men, was taxed by an unequal 
tariff to raise most of the money to pay the expenses of the conquest, 
suffered greater loss of her gallant sons by disease and in battle. The 
leaders of the North stood up in Congress and denounced the war as 
waged for plunder and spoils, discouraged our government and soldiers, 
exhorting the enemy to receive the latter with "bloody h?'^ 'Is to hos- 



38 



THE DISUNIONIST. 



pitable graves." As soon as peace is coucluded, our people are told tliey 
caunot and shall not have the coinmou right to occupy with the North — 
they of a small part and the North all — the land ceded by the treaty ; 
but they of the North must have all, and we of the South must be 
totally excluded. 

If the North had acceded to the proposal of the South in 1848, at the 
time it was made, and had run the line through to the Pacific ocean, it 
would have excluded the South from one million six hundred thousand 
square miles of the laud, while it would have left open to North and 
South the balance, only two hundred and sixty-two thousand square 
miles, less than one-sixth in area, and perhaps less than one-twentieth 
in value.* 



* Since this was in manuscript, we have met with the following condensed state- 
ment of the comparative area of the States and Territories, taken from the Detroit 
Press. The territory of Arizona seems to have been overlooked in the estimate, 
which we suppose approximates the true extent of each and tlie whole. 

"A comparative statement of the area of the present States with that of the 
territory destined to be erected into States exhibits the interesting fact that the 
area of the latter in square miles exceeds that of the former. Tlie superficial area 
of the Territories, organized and unorganized, is set down as follows : 





Sq. Miles. 




Sq. Miles. 


Kansas Territory, . . 


. . 136,000 


New Mexico Territory, . 


. . 210,000 


Minnesota " . . 


. . 141,000 


Nebraska " 


. . 528,000 


Oregon " . . 


. . 227,000 


Mesilla " 


, . 78,000 


Washington " . . 


. . 113,000 


Indian " 


. . 187,000 


Utah " 


. . 187,000 






Square Miles, 


. 1,807,000 



To these Dakotah is to be added, of the extent of whicli we have seen no esti- 



mate. 

" The superficial area of the present States is as follows 
Square utiles. 

Maine, 30,000 

New Hampshire 9,200 

Massachusetts, 7,800 

Rhode Island, 1,300 

Connecticut 4,lJ74 

Vermont, 10,212 

New York, 46.085 

New Jersey, 8,320 

Pennsylvania, 46,000 

Ohio, 39,964 

Indiana, 33,S09 

Illinois, 55,405 

Wisconsin, 53.924 

Michigan, 56,243 

Iowa, 50,914 

California, 188,000 



722,190 



Square Miles. 

Delaware, 2,120 

Maryland, 9,674 

Virginia, 61,352 

North Carolina, 45,000 

South Carolina 24,500 

Georgia, 58,000 

Alabama, 50,722 

Florida, 53,786 

Louisiana, 46,131 

Arkansas, 52,198 

Mississippi, 67,380 

Missouri, 47,156 

Tennessee, 45,600 

Kentucky, 37,680 

Texas, 237,321 

838,820 
622,190 



1,461,010 

" It is seen that the area of Kansas is nineteen thousand miles greater than that 
of all New England, New York, and New Jersey ; and that the area of Nebraska is 
ninety-five thousand miles greater than that of all the non-slaveholding States 
except California. Oregon is nearly equal in extent to all New England, New 



TIIEDISUNIONIST. 39 

We yielded the rich land of gold upon the Pacific : suffered ourselves 
to be taxed to buy off a large portion of Texas slave-lands to add to New 
Mexic.j, to abide the fortunes of that Territory. We submitted to the 
abrogation of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia ; left the sterile 
TerrTturies of New Mexico and Utah subject to the future movements of 
freesoilers, or to be cut up and divided, or added to other States, as a 
Black Republican Congress may see fit to order— all to get a law passed 
to carry out a plain and undisputed constitutional right to recover fugi- 
tive slaves ; which law the Northern States either repeal in their Legis- 
latures, or suffer their riotous population to murder our citizens who 
undertake to have it enforced. 

Such are, and for a long time have been, the terms of our union. 

It is true, the compromise line has been repealed and declared in- 
operative by the Supreme Court of the United States ; which has been 
about as beneficial to us as the repeal of the law of capital punishment 
to the felon after he has been hung. It is a first-rate idea, but comes 

too late. n ^ • 1 f 

It is like leading out two proud steeds to the course for the trial ot 
their speed, with equal physical power and training and ambition ; they 
come to the polls champing the bit and disdaining the earth upon 
which they tread. The chaiices are equal, and the friends of each are 
sanguine and free to wager. The word is given, when one tamer looses 
his'owu horse and seizes the other by the bit, and hokls him fast until 
the competitor has made two-thirds of the course ; he is then let go, and 
informed that the way is clear, and bid win the purse if he can. 

What gallant rider would not rein him from the field in sullen dis- 
gust ? Who but a knave would say the purse was fairly won ? Who 
but a dastard would not rather fight than give it up ? 

With about as little show of propriety and justice have we been ex- 
cluded from the Territories. To that acquired from Mexico they refused 
to apply the Missouri line, odious as it was. They refused, in words, to 
extend the Constitution and laws over the Territory, although that was 
virtually done by operation of law upon the treaty of cession.^ They re- 
fused to repeal the jNIexican anti-slavery laws, which, in reality, had no 
biudino- force j but were held in terror over our people, and were be- 
lieved to be binding by some of our statesmen. We were held back m 
the race until all was lost : then the obstruction is graciously removed. 
Even then we have not a fair chance, for we have to contend with free- 
soil Governors, and all kinds of anti-slavery appliances, leading to civil 
war, rapine, and plunder. 

The doubt that is kept hanging over the question is sufficient to deter 



York Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. It is possible that New Mexico and 
Mesilla will be embraced in one Territorial organization byCongi-ess at the present 
session, containing two hundred and eighty-eight thousand square miles, exceed- 
ino- all New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Utan 
is nearly equal in extent to all New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. 
Washington exceeds in extent all New England and New York. 

" If the Territories should be cut up into States of the average size of the present 
States, the Union would consist, when they should all be admitted, of between 
sixty and seventy members." 



40 THE DISUNIONIST. 

US from tlie risk of losing property as well as life. The Northern peo- 
ple have no property to risk : all theirs is protected everywhere by the 
laws of the Union ; while ours has to take the chauces of mob, rebellion, 
and civil war ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

KANSAS QUESTION. 

Upon the application of this Territory, at the session of Congress just 
adjourned, (June, 1S58,) for admission into the Union as a State, under 
a constitution framed by the Lecompton Convention, how different was 
the course of Nortliern statesmen toward her from what they pursued 
toward California eight years ago ! 

After the cession of that vast domain on the Pacific by the unfortu- 
nate republic of Mexico, at the close of the war with that power, while 
the government of the United States refused to repeal the Mexican laws 
against slavery; refused to extend the Constitution and laws over it, 
and refused to extend the Missouri line through it, our people were 
deterred from carrying the institution of slavery into that part of the 
public domain. Our more fortunate and favored brethren of the North, 
and squatters from every part of the world whence people choose to go, 
poured into and settled there upon the property of the United States, 
the fruit of our toil and blood and money, as well as theirs; nay, more 
so. They were scarcely warm in their nests before a brood of statesmen 
were hatched, who understood the right to occupy the public domain in 
a very diiferent light from what had been the doctrine before, or that 
which has been insisted upon since. 

By a talismanic power, and process that could suit no just man's views 
of propriety; without authority from the government, the proprietor for 
the use of the whole people ; without boundaries, without law to regulate 
suffrage and elections, without any real right or claim of right, they 
organized themselves into a convention. After grave debate they de- 
cided how much of the public lands they would take; they fixed their 
own boundaries, and made themselves lords within the lines they laid off". 
They unceremoniously decreed for themselves and their posterity that 
the people of the South should not go within their enormous limits with 
their property. Everybody in the whole world admitted to come, and 
buy and sell, dig and wash, plough and hoe, reap and sow, to their 
hearts' content, save and except alone the very people who had done and 
suffered and paid most to acquire the land ! 

With that instrument called a constitution, begun and ended in crime 
and fraud, they applied to Congress for admission into the Union as a 
sovereign State. That most unrighteous and unhallowed proceeding, 
void ah incepto, and all the way up, was received by Congress, taken up, 
confirmed, and sanctified by a solemn act making her a State — a deep, 
dark, and indelible stain upon the escutclTieon of the United States. 



THEDISUNIONIST. 41 

That page of history on which tlie foul deed is recorded ought to be davk- 
grouuded paper, clad for all time iu broad black lines of mourning. 
True, the bill was enveloped in another of their so-called compromises, 
under whose desecrated cognomen Southern men and patriots, misled by 
a false estimate of the Union, found solace for the disgraceful brand of 
inequality which the infamous act stamped indelibly upon them. 

And who were the men who were then insisting that California should 
come in? Are they not in the main the same who now insist with so 
much zeal that Kansas should stay out; the same who are so sleep- 
lessly vigilant in guarding the portals of the Union against a pro-slavery 
Constitution ? What has wrought so wonderfully upon their political 
learning and sagacity ? What has been the agency of so momentous a 
change in the opinions of these sage gentlemen ? Ah, it is the lawyer's 
bull that has gored the farmer's ox ; and circumstances, therefore, are 
quite changed. We are told about frauds in elections. Such there may 
have been on both sides, or upon one side alone. So there are in all 
closely contested elections, even in the States. I will guarantee that 
there will always be frauds in any election canvassed by the emigrants 
sent out by the Aid Societies of the North. If they did not practice them 
in the Territories, it would be a wonderful repentance and turning away 
from the sins taught them before they go out. 

It were vain that our friends in Kansas carried the election for Terri- 
torial Legislature, and for delegates to a Constitutional Convention, over 
the heads, and against the influence and intervention of freesoil gover- 
nors and officials, and Sharpe's rifles. It were vain that, in order to 
appease the unjn-ojJttious government and Black Republican Congress at 
Washington, they submitted the question of slavery to the people, and 
carried it by a large majority of lei/al votes over legal and illegal cast 
against. It were vain that our statesmen, with clear heads, and breasts 
full of false love of Union, stood up in Congress and answered every 
cavil the enemies of Kansas could bring against her. She was doomed 
to defeat. Then it was that our "watchmen on the tower" fell asleep. 
They had not the courage to pursue the line of policy on which their 
people at home had placed them. Instead of devising means to save the 
South, instead of looking to the star that rose in the hearts of their 
people, and stood over the only hope for deliverance and political salva- 
tion, they still pursued, wandering and groping in the dark, the false, 
flickering, will-with-a-wisp light of the Union. Instead of meeting 
apart, not as Representatives and Senators, but as free Southern men, and 
taking position upon the platform of Southern independence, they still 
held counsel with their enemies. They ''conferred" together, and sub- 
mitted to the humiliating terms of sending Kansas back — not upon the 
question of slavery, which would have met the terms of our resolutions 
and platforms, but upon a land ordinance to be voted upon in the 
manner by them prescribed. When the refusal of the proposition made 
by Congress, as to how much of their public lands they should retain, 
ipso facto, defeats the constitution itself, what odds does it make in 
the result whether the abolitionists vote against the proposal because they 
hate slavery, or the indifferent man upon slavery votes against the pro- 
position itself? In either case the vote is recorded against the constitu- 



42 THE DISUNIONIST. 

tion, and the defeat of the proposal rejects Kansas. If that is done 
when the vote is taken under the ''conference bill," will any man in his 
senses pretend that it is not because of her pro-slavery constitution ? 
Those who wish to avoid their pledges and their platforms, and preserve 
parties, may, at the sacrifice of plain truth. They will doubtless denounce 
as disorganizers and traitors those who have been pledged- for eight years 
to "disrupt" upon this contingency, and who wish to redeem the pledge. 
There is one in Georgia who would rather be discoursed "in line" by the 
music of federal cannon "in front," than to see the State back down in 
shame from her position. But we expect to see the men who placed her 
where she stands, urge her to strike her colors and bow in homage to the 
Union still ; and, what is more degrading, apologize for the government, 
a part of which they are, in withholding its protection from Georgians 
in Kansas, who have been robbed and driven from the Territory, in order 
that the vote might be taken without them. Will this State — one of the 
old thirteen — submit to a government which tolerates such gross injus- 
tice ? If so, then let us pass no more resolutions, build no more plat- 
forms, and talk never again about equal rights; but, like good slaves, 
bow our necks, take upon us the yoke, and wear it for ever. 



CHAPTER X. 

AFRICAN SLAVERY. 

As it is not intended to protract the discussion of any subject to a tedi- 
ous length, we will pass by the fact that the Northern States were instru- 
mental in introducing the institution of slavery into the country; that 
they profited immensely by the slave-trade itself; that they took the 
South into union with themselves, with her slaves, and recognized them 
in the Constitution ; that they sold out their slave interest to the South, 
and are now seeking to destroy that property which they sold us. The 
fact that they have no interest in our slave-property, and that their war- 
fare upon it is aggressive and unprovoked, and therefore intolerable — 
let us pass these, and come to the merits of the question of slavery. 
Upon which it is assumed : 

First. That slavery in the abstract is sustained by the Holy Scriptures. 

Second. That it is best for the slave. 

Third. That it is highly beneficial to the social condition of the white 
race, and especially to the poor; and 

Fourth. That a republican government cannot be long maintained in 
its purity without it. 

SCRIPTURAL VIEW OP SLAVERY. 

As early as Noah's time we hear our heavenly Father thus speaking 
through him to the descendants of Ham, (which word Adam Clarke says 
means "burnt or black:") "Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants 



THE DIB UNIONIST. 43 

shall he be unto his brethreo. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God 
of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, 
and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his ser- 
vant." (Gen. ix.) 

Abraham had servants born in his house, and bought servants with his 
luoiR'y. God granted to master and servant circumcision. <' He that is 
born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs 
be circumcised." (Gen. xvii.) The Lord sent an angel to meet the 
runaway servant Hagar, and command her to return to her mistress 
Sarah, from whom she had escaped on account of cruel treatment. Isaac 
had servants, Jacob had man-servants and maid-servants. In one of the 
commandments it is said, "in it [the Sabbath] thou shalt not do any 
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy 
maid-servant." In another it is said, "Thou shalt not covet thy neigh- 
bor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox," etc. 
If those " higher-law" gentry in New England are right, why did the 
Lord not change the verbiage and say, " Thou shalt not hold or own a 
man-servant nor a maid-servant?" Do you say that the Scriptures 
mean such hired servants as you have ? Not so ; for the Bible talks 
about that sort also. " The wages of him that is hired shall not abide 
with thee all night until the morning." (Lev. xix.) They had to pay 
their hired servants up every night. But the Bible itself closes that 
argument in the same book at the 25th chapter. "Both thy bondmen 
and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are 
-round about you; of them ye shall buy bondmen and bondmaids. More- 
over, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them 
shall ye buy ; and of their families that are with you, which they begat in 
your land ; and they shall be your possessions. And ye shall take them 
as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit for a posses- 
sion : they shall be your bondmen for ever; but over your brethren, the 
children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor." 

Perhaps our anti-slavery friends will say that all this was under the 
old administration in divinity, and that the new code or dispensation in- 
augurated by Christ the Saviour did not talk so. Let us see. In 8th 
Matthew the subject came up before Christ himself. The centurion told 
him he was a man in authority. "I say to my servant, {" donlos," 
which in Greek means slave,) Do this thing, and he doeth it." Instead 
of healing his sick slave, and saying he had not "found so great faith in 
Israel," why did he not tell him it was wrong to have the slave ? 

Paul also failed to reprove or condemn the institution. In Tim. i. 6, 
he says : " Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own 
masters worthy of all honor," etc. He said to the Ephesians, " Servants, 
be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with 
fear and trembling, as unto Christ. And ye, masters, do the same thing 
unto them, forbearing threatenings ; knowing that your Master also is in 
heaven." He enjoins the same duty to servants and masters among the 
Colossians. In the first epistle to Peter he says: "Servants, be subject 
to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also 
to the froward." 

St. Paul sent back Onesimus, the runaway servant of Philemon, to his 



44 THE DISUNIONIST. 

master, and requested the master to pardon tlie servant who had, under 
his preaching, been converted, and would therefore be more profitable to 
the master. He did not preach the emancipation of slaves. He con- 
fined his preaching to that kind of emancipation which makes his preach- 
ing truly valuable. 

EFrECTS UPON THE SLAVE. 

It would extend this discussion to too great length to enter fully into 
a comparison of the plij^sieal and mental condition of the African in the 
United States with that of the natives of Africa, which comparison 
would, if made conclusively, show the effect of our institution of slavery 
to be most favorable in its tendency upon the African himself. 

We pass by, also, the fact that in this country the African has the 
privilege of Bible instruction, and that his conscience is as free in 
matters of religion as that of his master, and come to the meritorious 
and vital proposition, that the condition of the African in the United 
States is better in a state of slavery, such as is tolerated and regulated 
by law in the Southern States, than it is in a state of freedom. 

The idea may prevail among some who are not personally cognizant 
of the institution of slavery, that the master has not only the right to the 
services of the slave, but is permitted to take life, limb, or health, at his 
option. Nothing can be farther from the truth. By the penal Code of 
Georgia, the "killing or maiming of a slave is put upon the same footing 
of criminality as the killing or maiming of a free white person." The 
same Code provides (loth division, 12th sec.) that "Any owner or em- 
ployer of a slave or slaves, who shall cruelly treat such slave or slaves, 
by unnecessary and excessive whipping, by withholding proper food and 
• sustenance, by requiring greater labor from such slave or slaves than he, 
she, or they are able to perform; or by not affording proper clothing, 
whereby the health of such slave or slaves may be injured and impaired; 
or cause or permit the same to be done, every such owner or employer 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished 
by fine or imprisonment in the common jail of the county, or both, at the 
discretion of the court." The 11th section provides that any other 
person except the owner, overseer, or employer, who shall beat, whip, or 
wound a slave, or free person of color, without sufficient cause or provo- 
cation, shall be indicted, and, on conviction, punished by fine or im- 
prisonment in the jail, or both, at the discretion of the court.^ And the 
owner of the slave vmay, in addition, recover damages for the injury done 
to the slave. 

Other slaveholding States throw around their slaves similar protection. 
The law does not limit the obligations of the master to such of his slaves 
as are old enough, and not too old, and well enough to work. It extends 
his obligation alike to the infant, the invalid, the halt and deformed and 
blind, and to the aged and infirm of all descriptions. The relation of 
master commences with the birth and ends with the death of the slave, 
and so do the obligations of the master. If the master had no interest 
in preserving the life or health of his slave, the law imposes a heavy and 
disgraceful penalty upon him for neglecting to do it. 

Where is a country elsewhere in which the indigent poor are thus 



THE DISUNIONIST. 45 

provided for? Who builds houses, buys blankets and clothes, aud pro- 
vides fuel for the sick or superannuated operative of a New England 
factory? Who deals him or her out day by day the food aud medicine 
which is required ? Do you ask me who does it in the South ? The 
statute quoted says who is bound to do it at his peril. 

To restrain the idle, vicious, and profligate habits of the African, 
instead of injuring him, it does what benefits him most, aud what he 
has never been found capable of when left to his own inclination. The 
morality of the slave is everywhere better than that of the free African. 
The law of Georgia also imposes heavy penalties upon the white man 
who traffics with a slave without the written permission of the owner to 
buy or sell the article in question. Thus temptation to steal is removed 
from the negro. It is also penal for any person except the master, or by 
his consent, to furnish them with spirituous liquors, and penal for the 
master to furnish it in sufficient quantities to enable his slave so fur- 
nished to furnish other slaves therewith. Thus the privilege of getting 
drunk is taken away, unless it is done by a violation of law. 

But we are told the negro has to work for his master without wages. 
Well, let me ask what poor people are there upon the earth that get an 
honest living that do not have to work for it? And how many thou- 
sands are not able in health to earn as good a living as a slave gets ? 
Besides, how many are unable, from sickness, infancy, and age, to earn a 
living at all, and therefore have to suffer for food, shelter, raiment, and 
medical aid, and who rely on charity, and for whom no one is bound by 
law to provide, aud for whom no one feels bound in morals to provide ? 

But we are told that the principle of holding men in bondage is wrong, 
regardless of the advantage it may be to the comfort of the slave. That 
is true when applied to white men and women, who are constitutionally 
free, and who love freedom even with misery, rather than slavery with 
ease and comfort. The mental condition of the African adapts him to 
his subordinate condition in slavery, aud he is happy in serving a good 
master; rejoices as much in his prosperity as he does in the good things 
bestowed upon himself. He giieves over the calamities of the master as 
his own misfortunes. Having no trouble to get work, provide food and 
raiment, he gives himself no trouble about freedom, which would only 
make him less happy, unless in cases where he is tampered with aud 
made dissatisfied with his condition. 

The poorest and most dependent white man in Georgia would resent it 
as an insult if commanded to hold a horse or black a shoe for the most 
opulent man in the State. Nor does he like to be hired to perform 
menial services. The negro, however well dressed or intelligent he may 
be, is never happier than in waiting on a white man. It is not the law 
tolerating slavery which gives him that disposition. He has it by nature. 
The white man degraded to that position would be miserable whatever 
comforts he might enjoy physically; as the slave is when elevated to a 
position of equality with the whites. 

But we are also told that some of our planters and farmers are cruel to 
their slaves, and abuse them, notwithstanding the existence of our whole- 
some laws. So are our Northern brethren somet>imes so to their wives 
aud children and hired servants; for men and women of cruel hearts and 



46 THE DISUNIOIv'IST. 

tyrannical minds are dispersed all over the world. But, to the credit of 
the Southern master, it does not often happen, and when it does, it is an 
exception to a general custom. Can as much be said for our Nortliern 
friends about their servants ? Thej say they do not often whip thcui : 
very well, if that were the only kind of cruelty that could be imposed 
upon a dependent. How do they feed, clothe, and work them ? what is 
their treatment in sickness and infirmity? and what is the conse<(uence 
to a servant who leaves his master in New Enirland, who sees fit to exer- 
cise his inestimable privilege of personal freedom ? The master can 
either force him to stay, or send him away without a character. Then 
no eniplojnnent can be had, vice or starvation is the feast to which he is 
invited. Not so with a slave who, either at his own request or master's 
option, changes owners. He goes out of the hands of one man who was 
bound to protect him, into that of another who thereby incurs the same 
obligation. And whatever misfortune may happen to him, whatever to 
his master, his own support and protection are provided for, except in one 
case alone, and that is emancipation. He is in that last case left often 
without the means of support and preservation, with no one to do so for 
him; and he is always left without the capacity for self-government. 
Freedom no more suits him than slavery does his master. 

EFFECTS TJrON THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE WHITE MAN. 

That there are, and ever have been, distinctions in all countries and 
ages between wealth and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, between 
the menial servant and the opulent person whom he serves, cannot be 
denied. The existence of menial servants everywhere necessarily leads 
to this result; as much so as the existence of wealth and poverty creates 
menial servants. The existence of African slavery in a community 
usually, almost necessarily, imposes menial services upon the slave. The 
white man, however poor, whether able to own a dollar's worth of pro- 
perty, or even to procure the means of comfortable living, occupies a 
position in society entirely above the slave, although the slave may be 
far more comfortably situated. Hence a poor man in a slaveholding 
community is more respectable than in any community in the world. 
The tendency this has to elevate and improve the lower grades of white 
people is wonderful. A white man in Georgia who is mean enough to 
associate with a negro upon terms of equality, forfeits all respect, even 
that of the negro himself. The negro here is not a companion for the 
white man in any sense. He is not admitted to his table or his chamber 
at all. As a necessary consequence, flowing from it, the poorest white 
man in the land is freely admitted to these privileges in the house of the 
most wealthy planter or merchant in the State. We do not mean that 
the most ignorant clown in a community would be considered an eligible 
companion for a refined and polished scholar, or that a ragged and dirty 
vagabond would feel easy in a parlor of fashionable gentlemen and ladies, 
but that, so far as social privileges are concerned, the poorest white man 
in the land is equal to the richest. Whether he has prepared himself to 
enjoy these privileges is another question. 

This is not the case in wealthy communities where the menial service 



THEDISUNIONIST. 47 

is performed by white servants. Those white servants, in a social point 
of view, occupy the place of our slaves. A white servant in New Eng- 
land may go to the polls and vote, if eligible, but his access to the parlor 
and table and chanibers of the opulent is another thing entirely. 

It requires no argument to show the elevating tendency of slavery 
upon such white people as are able to own them, to which nothing is 
required in such a country as this, by the poorest man in it, except a few 
years of frugal industry. But when can a New England menial servant 
hope to rise to the dignity of being served in that capacity himself? 

The consequences of general emancipation in the South of the slaves 
would indeed be disastrous. The owner would lose the property in his 
slave, and the means to till his lauds. The negroes would be turned 
adrift upon the community, most miserable to themselves, and infinitely 
annoying in every sense to the white people. But in that case the poor 
would suffer most. The more opulent could in some way make out to 
subsist; but what in the name of truth would the poor man do in that 
case — competition in the price of labor with a race of emancipated slaves, 
who in a few years would be little better than brutes ? The now poor but 
independent white men and women of this country reduced to a level 
with such a race as that, and subject to all the multiform annoyances 
that would befall them ! The idea is insufferable. Yet that is the end 
which our Northern brethren seek, by slow but no less certain means, 
to accomplish. How much cotton could we expoi't in a year after general 
emancipation ? Almost none. What means would we have then for 
exchange with foreign countries? Extract the supplies of cotton we 
now make from the North and Europe, and how would their wealthy 
manufacturers and their starving thousands of poor operatives come off? 
But let us look at the 

POLITICAL EFFECT OF SLAVERY. 

There are a few people in the South, in our slaveholding community, 
who are so poor and dependent upon their wealthy neighbors and em- 
ployers as to forego their own opinions and preferences, and vote for 
such men and measures as are dictated to them, but they are comjmra- 
tively few. As a general rule in the South, the only way to get a man's 
vote is to operate upon his judgment, and thereby move his will. It is 
not meant that all the people, ignorant as well as learned, reason philo- 
sophically about the merits of men and the effect of measures — that is 
supposing a thing done which very many are wholly incapable of — but 
that they think in some way, and by some process of reason they come 
to a conclusion, whether right or wrong, and according to their conclu- 
sions they vote, with but few exceptions. It is the effect of that personal 
independence which will be found to exist all over the slaveholding 
States. With us the opulent planter and his indigent overseer, the boss 
and his day-laborer, go to the polls and vote the same or opposite tickets, 
as their opinions of propriety may dictate. Where every man is thus free 
in the use of the elective franchise, a political aristocracy can never 
thrive. But in those opulent communities where the law places the 
ballot in the hands of every man, but circumstances of poverty and de- 
pendence cause it to be deposited at the will and dictation of a few of 



48 THEDISUNIONIST. 

the opuleut and rich, it may be republican in fact, but it is every thing 
else in eft'ect. 

But there is another view of the subject, in which it will appear that 
the institution of African slavery is eminently conservative of the repub- 
lican features of the government. In all countries and ages a careful 
survey of historic events will disclose that, sooner or later, capital and 
labor have struggled together for supremacy and control; their respective 
interests have conflicted ; in which controversy all the advantages usually 
accrue to the side of capital ; and labor, of course, is more or less borne 
down and oppressed. But in a slaveholding, agricultural community, 
the capital owns the labor, and their interests never can conflict. Any 
act of government that will advance the interest of labor favors the 
owner of the slave who performs the labor. To advance the interest of 
labor is the only way you can advance the interest of the man whose 
whole fortune is invested in a plantation, negroes, and mules. Not so 
in a wealthy political aristocracy, where the wealth of the community 
flourishes in proportion to the extent those who possess it grind the face 
of the poor. There legislation will most usually be found to discrimi- 
nate in favor of the interests of one, and against the other; and the 
liberties of the people have to yield to the necessities imposed by their 
poverty and dependence. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OUR NORTHERN FRIENDS. 

It has been said on the hustings, and through the press, and reiterated 
in almost every social circle in the South, that we have many good and 
true friends in the Northern States, notwithstanding the masses there are 
against us. 

The proposition is denied. It is true there are many men North whose 
opinions are "opposed to slavery in the abstract," as they call it; whose 
feelings, personally and privately, are on the side of our enemies, but 

who, upon political gnmuds, and for the purpose of not advancing 

our interest or circumscribing theirs, but for the purpose of preserving 
the Union, are willing to let slavery alone, and not interfere with it by 
any actual positive legislation, while they throw every obstacle in its 
way they can otherwise. If they wished to preserve the Union for the 
love of the South or of liberty, they might be, with some show of reason, 
set down as our friends. But they have another and ulterior object in 
the preservation of the Union. They know very well that if the Union 
is dissolved, the tribute we pay them must cease. They are the more 
prudent portion of our enemies, and therefore the most dangerous. But 
let us suppose, for the purposes of the argument, that they are in fact 
and in truth our friends, and are bond fide opposed to the aggressions 
upon our rights, and the levy of the tribute they collect from us, and 
willing to restore the original landmarks of republican equality, and live 



THE DISUNIONIST. 49 

perpetually in peace and repose. Let us suppose all this : what sood 
can their friendship do us ? What power have they to restrain the domi- 
nant party of their section, and to change the overwhelming majority 
there who are radically opposed to them and us ? Suppose a mob cornea 
to my house with felonious intent, and just as they are about to enter, to 
murder in cold blood my wife and children, a few of the party, seeing 
danger ahead, recant, while an overwhelming majority rush forward : am 
I to stand and see myself and loved ones around me brutally murdered 
and not strike a blow in their defence, because I can hear, above the roar 
of the mob, the voice of a few of their companions begging them to 
desist? The voice of our friends North, if we have any there, is as 
feeble, compared with that of the enemy, as would be the force and 
power of a cooing turtle-dove upon a solitary oak in the forests, when a 
thousand hungry eagles, with whetted beaks and distended claws, were 
already on the wing for the assault. Our revolutionary fathers had 
friends in the British' Parliament, men of power and eloquence and 
courage, who stood before the Peers and warned the realm, in thunder- 
tones, against the unauthorized exercise of the power of taxation without 
representation. It did not prevent the imposition of the odious tax upon 
tea, nor did it dampen the powder that proclaimed at Lexington to the 
British nation the principles that buoyed the hearts of our noble ances- 
tors. Nor did it enter into the balance-sheet of the account-current be- 
tween the colonies and the mother- country, which is contained in the 
Declaration of Independence. 



CHAPTER XIL 

NORTHERN -BORN CITIZENS OF THE SOUTH. 

There are very many gentlemen and ladies of Northern birth and 
education who have removed to and settled in the South, and have be- 
come tax-payers, _ voters, and property -owners, and sojourners. They 
may be divided into two general classes, of which classes there are, of 
course, shades and grades. Our notice of them is not intended to adu- 
late the one, or to injure the feelings or business of the other, but to 
state facts in the same spirit of candor that we intend to adhere to 
throughout, regardless of who smiles or frowns. 

The man of Northern birth who remains in his native section long 
enough to see and know, and, perhaps in ignorance of the truth, to par- 
ticipate in the deep feeling of opposition and hatred to our institutions in 
which the Northern people are brought up and educated ; who sees and 
feels how difterent are the people of the South from what they are 
believed and represented by their Northern brethren to be ; who sees 
and feels of truth that there is a deep and impassable gulf that divides 
the hearts and affections of the Northern and Southern people, and 
which cannot be removed while the fires of bigotry and party -spirit 
continue to burn — making sectional hatred an element in party organi- 
4 



50 THE DISUNIONIST. 

zation and political promotion ; that man who, although Northern by 
birth, has his heart entwined by the love of Southern life. Southern 
people, and Southern institutions; casting his eye back upon the land 
of his birth and early associations and friendships, he sees the heritage 
of his honorable and true sires held by degenerate sons, usurped by the 
devils of fanaticism, misrule, and destruction — that man is Southern, 
and a friend of the South in principle and interest. It will do to trust 
them. There are a host of such men* all over the Southern country; 
and in many cases they ai-e more ripe and mature for action than many 
of our own native-born sons. 

But there are other gentlemen in the Southern States, doing penance 
for gold, on a pilgriniage in a heathen land for gain, who feel that it is a 
costly sacrifice of their precious time to spend any part of it away from 
" the North," and especially in the South — a sacrifice only to be en- 
dured from the necessity of the case. They are a set of men who can 
see nothing excellent in individual Southern conduct; nothing charming 
in Southern beauty or scenery; nothing truly refining in Southei'n edu- 
cation; nothing pure in Southern religion or morals; nothing merit- 
orious in Southern literature, poetry, or eloquence ; nothing great in 
Southern statesmanship ; men and women who cannot admire a Southern 
voice, even in music; men and women who are uniformly accustomed, 
when any of these excellences chance to be mentioned in their presence, 
to narrate something infinitely superior to it that happened or was 
witnessed under similar circumstances in Con-nec-ti-cut, Var-mont, or 
New York, where the noble he or she was " brought up ;" men and 
women who, in our hotels and families, suffer themselves waited on by 
our black slaves because they cannot find white men and women mean 
enough, so destitute of pride and personal independence of character, to 
wait on them in the capacity of servants; men who, when they go to the 
polls — and they never neglect that part of their duty — cast their votes 
uniformly in the scale which, in their opinion, has the least mixture of 
Southern, and the greatest leaven of Northern sentiment and interest. 
These men are not unfrequently found to be more or less clannish in the 
towns and villages where they stop ; lend to, borrow from, and patronize 
each other, sometimes openly, but usually in a covert manner, make 
common cause, both in friendships and enmities. 

This last class of men, although intelligent and energetic, with fine 
business habits and qualifications, often of piety and integrity, and 
usually of good moral deportment, are not Southern. They are not our 
friends in peace and union ; and a sharp lookout over them will do no 
harm in case of separation and disunion ; and especially in case of what 
of all things else would be the least probable, a state of war between the 
two sections or republics. 



THE DISUNIONIST. 51 

CHAPTER Xni. 

SOUTHERN COOPERATION. 

It is a problem "wlietlier the people of the Southern States will enter- 
tain the idea of dissolving the Union under any circumstances. It is 
almost certain that they will not, unless it is by such cooperation of the 
Southern States as will give to the new government such an area and 
numerical strength of population as to secure its independence. "With 
our views of the Union and its evils as now constituted, it would be 
infinitely better for any one of the prominent Southern States to secede 
alone and stand alone, than to remain in their position of vassalage. 
But we do not hope to be able to impress that opinion upon the minds 
of a majority of tlae people : some of them are averse to mental labor, or 
have not the facilities ; and others, from negligence, will not examine for 
themselves : they will conclude we exaggerate the evils ; others, who 
are fully sensible of the evils under which we rest, will doubt the pro- 
priety of sepai-ate secession by any State. But, whatever be the truth 
upon that point, it would be most desirable that a Southern confederacy 
of States should be formed. 

We shall discuss hereafter the question of the right of the Southern 
States to quit the Union for the causes that exist. The object of this 
chapter is not to dictate, but to venture some suggestions upon the 
subject of a Southern cooperation of States to dissolve this union of con- 
flicting interests and principles, and to form one having, in the language 
of General Washington, the same principles, and an " indissoluble com- 
munity of interests." 

It has been feared by some that, if the Union were dissolved, it would 
be difficult to form a government. But such fears seem to us to have 
the least foundation in truth. In the first place, there would be no 
difficulty in agreeing upon a free government; for the simple reason 
that a free people would never think of making any other kind. Is 
there a doubt that religion would be free ? The answer is in the ques- 
tion. Is there a man, in the Church or out, in the whole. South, who 
would have one religion established by law, or any other religion sup- 
pressed ? You can no more make any thing else but a free government 
out of it than you can make a wood house out of stone. AVe have not 
any other material than freedom and equality out of which to construct 
the government. Would we fall out about office and place ? The way 
to decide such quarrels is the ballot-box, as it is now done. 

Would we fall out about taxes? A plain and economical government, 
such as we need and can never get in the Union, would not require 
much money. Nor could any man grumble to pay his proper and 
equitable pro rata; or, if duties were imposed upon the importation of 
goods, it would take but a very short statute to say that all goods im- 
ported shall pay a stated per centum ad valorem; or that every person 
should pay, ad valorem, a certain per centum tax, collecting no more 
money for goverment than was actually needed, remembering that there 
is nothing so dangerous to the people as a government made rich at their 
expense. 



52 THE DISUNIONIST. 

Could we fail to agree in removing all barriers and obstructions to the 
agricultural interest, when the whole people, from one end of the 
Southern United States to the other, would be an agricultural people ? 
Could we fall out about establishing on a permanent basis the institution 
of slavery, when all the States embraced would be deeply and vitally 
interested in it ? Do you fear a dispute with the Northern republic 
about the division of the public stores '' No such dispute is reasonably 
to be apprehended; but if that is all, it is far better to give them all, 
and haul them over and deliver them to them, than pay the tax we pay 
them now for six months. Do you apprehend a dispute about the navi- 
gation of the rivers that flow across the line that would divide the two 
republics ? All the odds are on our side, because we hold the big ends 
of the rivers and they the little ends, we the mouth and they the source. 

Would there be difficulty on the part of Southern men in recovering 
fugitive slaves ? Do you say we have a law in the Union for the re- 
covery of fugitive slaves, and that out of the Union we would have none? 
A law to which the people are violently and unanimously opposed in 
their hearts and feelings, which feelings are instigated by party-spirit 
and sectional hatred, can never be executed to any gi-eat extent. Hence 
we never have really profited by our law. It is time to demonstrate a 
principle, and show our people that the law could be executed. To quiet 
them, a few negro slaves have been restored, usually at much greater cost 
than the value of the slave ; and not unfrequently at great hazard and 
danger from the mob ; and sometimes at the loss of life. There has 
been, and will always be, great difficulty in finding out the rendezvous 
of the slave where so many people are ready to aid him in his escape or 
concealment. Then it is equally difficult and hazardous to make the 
arrest. In truth, all the proceedings are expensive and hazardous. 
Therefore the law has been virtually inoperative. But in a separate 
government, where the prejudice against slavery would only be national, 
and not of a political party and sectional character, it would abate much 
in ardor and fanaticism. Hence they would not only not wish our 
slaves among them, but it would be far more likely that a treaty for the 
restoration of slaves would be executed than our fugitive law ; especially 
if the refusal to make such restoration were made and held to be a grave 
national offence by the government. 

But is it urged that the Northern republic would never enter such treaty? 
To say that is to say she would stand aloof for ever from our commerce. 
And surely we could as well do without such treaty as she could with- 
out our products. Besides, there are very many modes to reach their 
interests, such as denying all civil rights to their citizens — for instance, 
the collecting of debts ; besides, we would not have so many slaves to 
run away from us if it were provided that every Northern man found 
among us under circumstances of suspicion of tampering with slaves 
should be hung, even upon negro testimony. 

Do you see difficulties in making treaties with foreign countries? The 
answer is twofold. We could make the best treaties of any people in 
the whole world ; and would have the least use for them. Would we fall 
out about the mail ? We can give the North all the mail-bags that are 
used on our side, and grow cotton enough in one year on one Mississippi 
plantation to weave mail-bags sufficient to last us a hundred years. 



THE DISUNIONIST. 53 

No, there is no difficulty ia forming a government; our difficulties lie 
in a condition precedent — that is, the dissolution of this we have. The 
Southern Republic ought to embrace all the slaveholding States, unless 
there be one or more of them that would be willing to give up their 
slaves. If there be such a one, there would be no difficultyin freely giv- 
ing her up. 

But if they could not all be induced to join in the movement, certainly 
that would be the subject-matter of deep regret, but not a sufficient 
reason to induce the balance to remain in a perpetual slavery. 

But how .shall we go to work to bring about a dissolution of the 
Union ? The process is easy, if the people favor the object to be attained 
by the means used. A convention of delegates representing popular 
assemblies in the States, who meet and consult together from the differ- 
ent'States, can do nothing except advise and recommend, from the fact 
that they do not feel instructed by the people in any legitimate mode. 
A disunion cooperation party should seek and obtain the control of 
each State government, refusing any national position or appointment. 
And when a party formed upon disunion principles gets the control of a 
State, by a decided majority being formed and held together upon prin- 
ciples, it might be relied upon in that State and by other States. Sup- 
pose such a party in power in the State of Georgia, with the Execu- 
tive and both branches of the General Assembly. The State could 
refuse to represent herself in the Senate of the United States. And it 
is supposed the General Government would scarcely send out a manda- 
mus to compel our Legislature to elect. It is believed there will be per- 
sons who would be willing to be voted for for the representative branch 
of Congress so long as Georgia remains in the Union. But suppose, 
under the instruction of the General Assembly, the Governor should re- 
fuse to commission the Representatives. Is there any power to force 
them ? Unrepresented in Congress, what is Georgia's connection with 
the Union ? Simply the execution of the laws of the United States in 
her limits — nothing more. She would, while alone and before the for- 
mation of a Southern government, submit to these, and have no conflict 
with the United States. When a sufficient number of States should 
place themselves in that position, nothing would be simpler and easier 
than to elect delegates and send them to a given point, and enact our 
independence and form a government. If there then was a conflict 
about the execution of the laws of the United States in our limits, it 
would be with the whole, and not a single one of the States of a South- 
ern republic. They would never amuse themselves at that kind of sport. 
It would hazard to them too much for such small profit. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

SECESSION. 



In a former chapter allusion was made to the circumstances which led 
to, and the purposes our fathers had in, the formation of the Union. As 



54 THE DISUNIONIST. 

the right to discontinue it depends much upon the question as to what 
kind of a Union they did actually form, it will be proper to consider that 
it is thought proper to pass by so much of the organic structure as does 
not relate to or elucidate the main (question, whether they formed a 
Union by which the States are perpetually bound together, or whether it 
be such a one as a State can rightfully retire from, in consequence of the 
wrongful manner in which the articles of agreement between the parties 
are executed. There are various sources from which light is shed upon 
this question, among which may be mentioned, the instrument of writing 
itself, its contemporaneous history; the good intended to be secured, 
and the evil to be avoided, and also the opinions of men concerned in 
making the Union. And upon this last, in order to understand what 
weight is to be given to the opinions of those men, it will be excusable 
to take first an historic glance at the early political parties of the couulry. 

The people of the present day are accustomed to view past things in a 
false light as to vices and virtues. They overrate the virtues of past 
ages, and therefore are much inclined to make unfavorable comparisons 
against the present degenerated state of morality and public virtue. They 
forget that historians have indulged a universal trait of human nature, 
that of treading lightly upon the ashes of the dead, spreading the mantle 
of charity over the faults and vices of the departed, and placing their 
virtues in too conspicuous a light for just comparison. In the case of an 
outrageously bad man, such as Burr, Arnold, or Charles the First, or 
Robespierre, the scene is changed, the curtain is raised, the sunlight of 
reason and malicious detraction vie with each other to expose the dark 
shades of character, and too often to conceal the few virtues the bad man 
may really have possessed. In this light we view the heroes of the Pievo- 
lution and the statesmen of the early histoiy of our country. It is all 
proper to venerate them, to honor their names, and cherish their good 
deeds in our memory; but that cannot hinder the truth that there were 
selfish and ambitious men in the army, as well as in the formation and 
early- administration of the government. 

It is, however, worthy of note that the extremity and mutual depend- 
ence to which they were driven made them faithful. The love of 
liberty, the hatred of oppression, and the fear of destruction, made them 
patient in their natural bravery. The same motives made them patriots 
when they came to form and administer a government. 

Tliey diifered in opinion as to how the government ought to be formed, 
what powers ought to be given to it, and what reserved. They also dif- 
fered as to what powers had been given and what reserved, and what 
construction was to be given to the grant of powers to the General 
Government which are defined in the Constitution. 

This is the origin of parties, and the basis of that party-spirit which 
has more or less, at difl'erent periods, agitated the country. The party 
who wanted most powers given to the General Government conscientiously 
believed their plan best to promote the general good. Hence they as 
honestly sought to attain the same end by liberal and latitudinarious con- 
struction of the Constitution. They who had resisted the large grant of 
powers, and had contended for the greatest amount of reserved powers to 
the States and people, suught to preserve those rights by strict construc- 
tion, and resisting every innovation. 



THE DISUNIONIST. 55 

The strict constructionists who, under the lead of Mr. Jefferson, as- 
sumed the name of Kepublicans, prevailed. The literal constructionists, 
under the lead of Hamilton, Adams, and others, who were called Federal- 
ists, were driven to the wall; and their opinions and views, when it came 
to put them in practice, met with the overwhelming condemnation of the 
people. Hence, in discussing the principles of the government as settled 
by the Constitution and the opinions of those who were contemporaneous 
with its formation, to cite the opinion of a Federalist, however honest he 
may have been, is like citing an overruled case in the argument of a 
legal question. 

That the States did unite after peace was made, and form a govern- 
ment, which is defined in the Constitution, and that in forming which 
they acted in their several sovereign capacity, no one will deny. If they 
consolidated themselves into one Avhole, thus blended they destroyed 
themselves as integral units ; they destroyed their separate identity, and 
became a nation. If they did not so consolidate and form a nation, what 
kind of a government did they form ? A republic ? Not a republic, be- 
cause the States who were parties were republics of themselves. Then 
what did they make, if neither a nation nor republic ? They made a con- 
federacy of republics. How did they give force and effect to the terms 
upon which they agreed to confederate ? By entering into a written arti- 
cle of agreement. What is it? The Constitution. What says the 
Constitution, or what has each State, speaking through the Constitution, 
stipulated with the other States ? That Congress shall have power to do 
certain things therein specified. That Congress shall not do certain 
things therein stated. That the States shall not do certain things therein 
also stated. It also defines the powers and the duties of the President, 
the judges, etc. And that the (Jonstitutiou and laws made in pursuance 
thereof, and treaties made under the authority of the United States, shall 
be supreme. All powers not delegated, and not prohibited to the States, 
were impliedly reserved to them and to the people. The meaning is, 
that nothing passed by the grant of powers to the General Grovernment 
from the States, except those which were therein stated. So it was held 
by those of its framers who adhered to strict construction. But as the 
question was mooted by others, in order to settle it free from doubt, one 
of the amendments to the Constitution expressly provided to that efi'ect. 
The same school of llepublicau statesmen also held that the States, being 
sovereign communities, could not be defendants to suits in the courts. 
That also seems to have been questioned ; and, to free that point from 
doubt, one of the amendments to the Constitution expressly provided 
"that the judicial powers of the United States shall not be construed to 
extend to' any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against 
any one of the United States." 

Mr. Jefferson, whose opinions were ratified and adhered to without 
formidable opposition for the period of twenty-five years afterwards, 
than whom there is no higher authority, speaking through the Kentucky 
Resolutions of 1798, says, 

" That the several States composing the United States of America 
are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General 
Government; but that by compact, under the style and title of a Consti- 
tution for the United States and amendments thereto, they constituted a 



56 THEDISUNIONIST. 

General Government for special purposes, delegated to that government 
certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass 
of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General 
Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthorized, void, 
and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and 
is an integral party ; that this government, created by this compact, was 
not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers dele- 
gated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the 
Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of 
compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an 
equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and 
measures of redress." 

Here the doctrine is distinctly stated, that the General Government 
can only exercise delegated powers, that the discretion of the govern- 
ment is not the measure of its powers, and further, that there is no 
common judge, that is, no third party to whom an authoritative reference 
or appeal of dispute can be made ; but that each State is an inti'ijral, 
that is, not fractional but iclwte, party to the compact, and the General 
Government not being the supreme arbiter, and there being in fact no 
common judge, each State has the right to judge, not for another, hut for 
itself, not only of the infractions and violations of their compact of 
Union, but has also the prerogative to say what kind of redress and what 
measure of redress it will take. 

Similar tenets are put forth by the resolutions of the commonwealth 
of Virginia in the same year, written and expounded by Mr. Madison, 
whose authority upon constitutional questions ought not to be doubted at 
this day. Hear what he says: " That this Assembly doth explicitly and 
peremptorily declare that it views the powers of the Federal Government 
as resulting from the compact to which the States are parties ; as limited 
by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that 
compact ; as no farther valid than they are authorized by the grants 
enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, 
and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by said compact, 
the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty 
bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for main- 
taining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties 
appertaining to them." 

" That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret that a 
spirit has in sundry instances been manifested by the Federal Govern- 
ment to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional 
charter which defines them ; and that indications have appeared of a 
design to expound certain general phrases (which, having been copied 
from the very limited grant of powers in the former Articles of Confed- 
eration, were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the 
meaning and effect of the particular enumeration which necessarily ex- 
plains and limits the general phrases, and so as to consolidate the States 
by degrees into one sovereigiiti/, [mark the expression !] the obvious ten- 
dency and inevitable result of which would be to transform the present 
republican system of the United States into an absolute, or at least a 
mixed, monarchy." 



THEDISUNIONIST. 57 

He was there, and aided in forming that sacred Constitution, twelve 
years before. He had not only aided in moulding the form of that 
country he so much loved, but possessed one of the clearest and best 
balanced minds upon the American continent. Sleep on, thou patriot 
and prophet sage ! right truly hast thou descried and justly denounced 
the evil ; and sorely does thy country reel and stagger under the ful61- 
ment of thy prophecy ! Do you tell me that Jefferson and Madison, who 
entertained these views, and had the boldness in solemn form to proclaim 
them against the then dominant party in the government, in the then 
weak and dependent condition of the States, would, if now in life, 
counsel the old commonwealth of Virginia to submit to a system of 
government which imposes the burdens upon one and confers the 
benefits of government upon another end of the Union ? Would they, 
after sixty years of experience, every one of which demonstrates their 
wisdom and correctness, would they be found telling the people that 
this government is absolutely one of the majority, that integral unit, 
that "one sovereignty," which has been for years worse than despotism, 
is the government which they intended to ordain ? Never. It would 
be an impious slander to say so. 

Mr. Calhoun, at Fort Hill, in 1831, said : "The error is in the assump- 
tion that the Greueral Government is a party to the constitutional com- 
pact. The States, as has been shown, formed the compact, acting as 
sovereign and independent communities. The General Government is 
but itfi creature ; and though in reality a government, with all the rights 
and authority which belong to any other government, within the orb of 
its powers, it is, nevei'theless, a government emanating from a compact 
betivecn sovereigns, and partaking in its nature and object of the character 
of a joint commission, appointed to superintend and administer the in- 
terests in which all are jointly concerned ; but having, beyond its proper 
sphere, no more power than if it did not exist." 

If the authority of Mr. Calhoun be doubted upon the ground that he 
is Southern, and falsely accused of being sectional in his_ views for 
taking the only true federative view of the compact of union, let us 
see how the Supreme Court of the United States talk about the govern- 
ment. That exalted tribunal, in 1857, in the case of " Dred Scott," says, 
" For although it is sovereign and supreme in its appropriate sphere of 
action, yet it does not possess all the powers which usually belong to the 
sovereignty of a nation. (Jertain specified poivers enumerated in the 
Constitution have been conferred on it; and neither the legislative, 
executive, nor judicial departments of the government can lawfully ex- 
ercise any authority beyond the limits marked out by the limits of the 
Constitution." 

These authorities establish that the Government of the United States is 
supreme in exercising the powers granted in the Constitution; that 
beyond that they cannot go ; that it is the creature of the States, who, 
as sovereigns, entered into it; that it is not the judge of the limit of its 
power to the exclusion of the States ; that the States, instead of being 
merged and consolidated into one whole, are distinct and integral parties 
to a'compact; that they have the right and power to judge of infractions, 
and apply such mode and measure of redress as they think proper. 



58 THE DISUNION 1ST. 

There can nowhere be found a power granted to one State, or a ma- 
jority of States, or to the General Government as their agent, or in its 
own right, to restrain a State, and to prevent its going out of the com- 
pact, with or without cause, when such State acts in its capacity as a 
sovereign community. 

It is not meant that a citizen of a State, or a mob of citizens, can 
rightfully oppose the authority of the General Government, or resist the 
execution of a constitutional law of Congress, or that the Government can- 
not restrain a citizen or mob ; but that when a State, as such, acts, and 
demands the allegiance of her citizens even in opposition to the authority 
of the United States, such allegiance is due the State. And whether the 
State is right or wrong in its action, there is no power constituted or in 
existence that can restrain her, except as sovereign and independent 
countries can proceed with each other. For to say a State may secede 
for good cause, and not for what is insufficient cause, would be to 
deprive the State of the right to judge of her cause of grievance. 

Let us suppose that all the maritime powers in the whole world enter 
into a solemn league, to the effect that annually there should meet at a 
given place a High Admiralty Convention, composed of one delegate 
from each sovereign power in the whole world, which, when assembled, 
should make and ordain all needful laws touching the subject of navi- 
gation of the high seas of the known world. Let us suppose the mutual 
agreement ratified and confirmed by the highest executive and legislative 
authority in each of the countries who become parties to it; and that 
this organic agreement contained a stipulation that all the laws made by 
said High Convention should bear equally upon all the parties, and the 
citizens of each ; and that such laws, when made and published, should 
be supreme throughout the civilized world; that its powers of making 
laws should be rigidly confined to the subject of navigation; and that 
upon that subject no country or government should enact any law or 
assume any jurisdiction; and suppose it stipulated in the organic league 
that it should continue in force for the space of fifty years, when it should 
cease and determine ; would any x)ne suppose in that case that the High 
Convention could pass any law after the expiration of the fifty years, or 
within that period, except upon the subject of navigation ? 

Let us suppose no time is stated when the league shall expire, but that 
it were stipulated that it should be binding so long only as each power 
should in good faith obey and respect the laws enacted under it. Then 
suppose our government should knowingly and wilfully disregard and 
violate one of the statutes of the High Convention. Is there any doubt 
that France, Spain, and all the rest would be, eo instanti, released from 
the league? 

Let us suppose, then, that it were stipulated in the organic league that 
it should cease whenever any law should be enacted which was unequal 
and unjust in its operation toward any one of the powers or their citi- 
zens. Then let England, France, Germany, Russia, and other strong 
powers, combine and pass a law that the ships bearing Spanish colors 
should not enter the Gulf of Mexico upon pain of confiscation; that such 
an act in convention should receive the sanction and vote of every dele- 
gate except that of Spain; or even suppose her delegate base enough to 



THE DISUNIONIST. 



59 



vote for sucli a law and make it unanimous; would not that act, ipso 
farto terminate all the power and authority of the High Convention, 
and release all the powers from their obligation to obey its laws, just and 



.isty 



kit let us suppose still further, that there is no time or circumstance 
stated in the organic league upon which it shall cease, but that the instru- 
ment is silent upon the ^subject, there being a stipulation that no unequal 
law should be passed: every principle of law and justice would release 
Spain in the case put above. But let us suppose a still stronger case, 
tlKit the lea-nie should state on its face that its duration should be per- 
petual, and "that no discriminating law should be passed, ihere is no 
tribunal upon earth that would not hold that Spain is released when, by 
a foul combination of the strong powers, she is excluded from navigating 
one of the seas which is left open to all the rest, or any one of them. 

But whence would such convention derive its existence and its power: 
Is it self-existent and inherently sovereign, or is it created by the par- 
ties? Does not its right to act, even within its limited sphere, rest 
entirely in compact and mutual agreement ? During the continuance _ot 
the leaiue, why is it that one of these maritime powers, in its own legis- 
lature, cannot pass a law upon the subject of navigation? Is it not 
simply for the reason that each had agreed not to enact a law upon 
that subieet? And docs not that agreement legally rest upon the con- 
tinuation of the will of each power, inasmuch as there is no penalty or 
forfeiture provided for even a wrongful discontinuance of the league f 

But fuiiher, what becomes of the sovereignty of all these maritime 
powers daring the continuance of the league? Does this created con- 
vention become a sovereign because its creators^have delegated to it the 
rio-ht to exercise an attribute of sovereignty so far only as to authorize it 
to'enact a supreme law upon a given subject ? _ If it becomes a sovereign 
the sovereignty of each of the creating powers is necessarily destroyed and 
mero-ed in ft. There would be but one in the world, as a necessary con- 
sequence. What, then, would become of the sovereignty of that one when 
it expired by limitation, or any contingency whatever Most certainly 
this Hioh Convention would not be a sovereign at all; but the powers 
that creWd it would continue to be sovereigns as before, in their tull 
vioor The sovereignty of each would not be m abeyance not be 
abddo-ed, or divided; but the right to exercise one attribute by volun- 
tary =i-reement waiv:^!, and the duty voluntarily incurred to obey a law 
not by a superior, but by coequals, and in part by itself, which compact 
and oblio-at on would only be binding morally, as there were no power to 
compel obedience, there being no court in the world having power and 
iursdction over' a sovereign^, and the only legitimate way ot dealing 
S a sovereign being negotiation, and an ultimate appeal to the sword 
where there is catitius belli. , . , i u 

T he eo-al right at all times existing, the moral right, such as would 
iust fy tlfe powder in the eyes of the world, would most certainly accrue 
ipon ^the exercise of unjust discriminations, or the violation of the 

"^ir'cr Ce put is precisely such in principle, though on a more 
limited scale, as that made by the Constitution ol the United State.. 



60 THE DISUNIONIST. 

They were sovereigns before they went into the Union, beyond all doubt. 
They as such created the Union; the Constitution is the charter of its 
being. It has no more life and vigor tliau is there expressly given; it 
has no powers except what are there defined. The States did not ia 
express words make the central government a sovereign ; they did nothing 
which by operation of law could make it such. The States never agreed 
by express words that each of their sovereignties should be destroyed; 
they did nothing which by operation of law could produce such a result. 
They only agreed that the government should do certain things, the 
doing of which we concede to be the exercise of attributes of sovereignty 
to that extent, which things are particularly specified. Just as if A. of 
Greoriria, owning a plantation and negroes and stock in Alabama, gives B. 
a power to sell the negroes and stock. B., in selling them, acts in the 
name of A., and has all the power and prerogative A. would have if pre- 
sent. But the giving the power, or acting under it, or notifying the sale, 
would not make B. identical in person with A. B. would no more be A. 
than if the power had never been made. Nor would the limited power 
authorize B. to sell the plantation, it not being expressed in the power. 
So it will appear, that although B. could act, and his act would be as 
authoritative and binding on A. in the sale of the stock, etc., as if A. had 
been present and done so in person, it does not follow that B. could 
do all the things that A. could do in Alabama. For A., if there in per- 
son, could sell negroes, stock, land, and all, and, if he chose, could give 
them away, or the money arising from the sale. 

The States agreed in the writing that the laws of the agent, the 
General Government, made in' pursuance of the delegated powers, should 
be sujjreme, and obeyed as such. 

It is conceded that, upon reciprocal principles, and in consideration 
that the duties and obligations imposed, if binding on one are binding on 
all, that while the States claim the benefits of a contract, they cannot 
relieve themselves of the obligations; that while a State holds the other 
States bound to it, the idea of allowing that State to cast off" the duty of 
obeying the laws that all agree shall be supreme, would not well comport 
with our views of common justice. If the obligations of the Constitu- 
tion and laws are obligatory from Georgia to Alabama, they are also from 
Alabama to Georgia. But to test the question, let us suppose that 
Georgia, in solemn convention of her people, for causes she judges suffi- 
cient, acting as a sovereign political community, repudiates the whole 
confederation, and declares her intention to discontinue the compact of 
Union, and to henceforth be free and independent, and to exercise all 
the rights and immunities of dn independent and separate government, 
absolving all her citizens from obedience to the United States, and repu- 
diating all laws of the United States incompatible with her separate 
state of government, what power is there to restrain her ? There is no 
court having power and jurisdiction over a sovereign, no penalty or 
restraining force is provided in the Constitution against secession. None 
can anywhere be found. The only way she can be approached is through 
ambassadors, as sovereigns usually speak to each other. If she has com- 
mitted a real or supposed violation of the rights of another sovereign, 
which she refuses to redress and atone for, an appeal to the sword is the 



TIIEDISUNIONIST. 61 

only resort. But the mere act of withdrawing will not constitute such 
violation. The act is nothing but the exercise of a legal right; and if 
that right is exercised in such a manner as not to trespass upon the 
rights of others, the mere withdrawing would not be such an act as 
would make just cause of war. It would be, in legal parlance, (hrmuum 
absque injuria. If in retiring we should carry oif the goods or property 
of other people, it would be just to make restitution; or if we should cap- 
ture their citizens or seize their ships, any such injuries should be 
repaired, and refusal to do so would be an act of injustice, for which the 
State ought to be held accountable in every form known to the laws of 
nations. But if no such act were committed, and no injustice done to 
any other country or their citizens, why ami upon what principle is it 
that they could make war upon us more than that we should make war 
upon them? But in reference to the General Government, if it should 
set up any such prerogative, whence is it derived ? Is it from the Con- 
stitution ? No. Is it by the law of nations ? If we were consolidated 
with them into one integral community, then the right to suppress a 
revolt could be claimed ; but under the law of nations, how is the power 
derived to subjugate and reduce to slavery a free and independent people, 
without injury or provocation ? No such rule can be maintained. If we 
are the slaves, the property of the General Government, they might 
retake us, and teach us, by wholesome chastisement and correction, our 
duty for the future. But if we are their slaves, where is the bill of sale, 
and to which one of the generous masters do we owe our supreme reve- 
rence and obedience ? 

The States never having expressly sun-endered their right to retire, 
and there being nothing in the compact which can be construed so to 
mean, and since all the structure of the Government and the terms of 
the confederacy seem to indicate the very opposite intention, and there 
being no legal authority to I'cstrain such an act, it follows, as matter 
of course, that such right exists in each State, and whether it be for 
good or bad cause in the opinion of the balance of the world, if exercised 
without committing any positive injury to the rights of others, must 
necessarily be a peaceable right, and that any act hostile in its charac- 
ter, commenced to restrain the exercise of such right in that mode, 
would make the restraining party the aggressor. 

It is proper, however, to add, that those who made the Union believe 
that it would and ought to continue, for the simple reason that they 
thought it indispensable to independence, as it was at that time and for 
many years afterwards ; and also, that they fully and freely trusted that 
it would be maintained as its authors intended it should be. And truly, 
if it had been carried out so, very probably a separation would never 
have been desirable. 

If it appears that, instead of being carried out upon the principles of 
equal privileges and rights, it is in reality executed, by the present parties 
to it, in such a manner as to operate very unjustly to a weak section, and 
in favor of a numerically strong one, it would not only afford to the weak 
and injured section good grounds for exercising the right to secede, but, 
upon the score of moral rectitude, it would furnish that section a good 
plea before the civilized world. But aside from the nature of the organic 



62 THE DISUNIONIST. 

structure of the government, and the coteraporaneous opinions of its 
authors, there is a peculiar circumstance connected with tlie Constitution 
which goes to show that our fathers did contemplate the possibility of an 
abuse of ^delegated powers, and also the assumption of others not dele- 
gated ; and that, peradventure, the Union might not be " perpetual." 
Hence the provision to that effect which had been in the Ai'ticles of 
Confederation was left out, and instead of saying the Union shall be 
perpetual, they left the question open. 

It is not stated in the Constitution that each State, being a sovereign, 
shall have the right, upon what it thinks good cause, to secede from the 
Union ; such a provision would have been a redundant one, (of which 
there is perhaps as little to be found in the Constitution as any document 
of equal length in the English language.) If the States were sovereign, 
integral political communities, and that right not being prevented by the 
Constitution, it existed of course. It would, under that view, have been 
as useless a provision as to have said that each man and woman in the 
United States shall have the free privilege to breathe the vital air. 

If the maker of a promissory note in the usual form should add to it 
the further promise, that the payee should have the right at the maturity 
of the note, if not paid, to sue on the same in any court having juris- 
diction of the person and subject-matter, this last would be redundancy, 
from the simple fact that the payee would have that right Avithout the 
statement of it in the note. And, in that case, if it had been intended 
he should not have the privilege of enforcing its collection by suit, it 
would be necessary that the note should say so. 

If it had been intended that the States who become parties to the 
compact of Union should never have the right to retire from it, that 
they should place themselves in the power of superior combinations, 
without any rightful redress for oppressive acts, without power to dissolve 
tlie chains of their slavery, it ought to have been so put down in the 
writing. That would have destroyed the identity of the States as parties 
to a confederacy, and have made the whole, when united, a consolidated 
republic, self-existent, judge of its own powers, keeper of its own con- 
science, the only judgment or authority in which would be the supreme 
will of a majority. It would have become at once a unit, a consolidated 
whole : instead of being a combination of wheels, each revolving in its 
own orbit, and moving within its own sphere, held together by the com- 
mon bond of constitutional union, it would have instantly become one 
great self-moving and controlling wheel. No part of such a consolidated 
whole could then have set up any claim to a right to withdraw, except 
upon principles of rebellion and revolution, a right which appertains to 
man and brute, to freemen and slaves, and to all occupying places of 
subjection, provided they see fit to risk the chances of the chastisement 
and resubjugation which the sujjerior may, in a relative point of view, 
rightfully impose 5 the moral question as to the rightfulness of the revo- 
lutionary movement in the particular case being superseded in a political 
aspect by the paramount question of slavery and freedom. If the in- 
ferior and revolutionary party is rightfully enslaved, then, whatever may 
be the circumstances justifying the actiQU in the particular case, still the 
right to restrain, in a political point of view, exists in the superior. 



THEDISUNIONIST. 63 

Hence, if the right to secede is only that of rebellion and rovohilion, 
the risiht and power properly appertains to the Government to restrain, 
even hj the sword, such secession, whatever may be the aggravation^ of 
the circumstances under which we suffer. And the fact of establishing 
independence in that case, however good and just the principle for which 
we contended, would depend solely upon force. 

It were not sufficient for our fathers that they had independence of 
powers abroad. The pilgrim-fathers, who fled from domestic oppression, 
had national independence in the country from which they came. The 
governments from which they came were fully able and willing to protect 
them, of all grades and shades of opinion, from tyranny abroad. But to 
them the tj^ranny of their own governments was intolerable. Our fathers, 
by the battles of the Revolution, established independence and freedom, 
so far only as related to intrusions from abroad. When they came to 
orixanize a government, they intended to establish freedom, equality, and 
iultice at home, as well as provide for the public defence from abroad. 
I)id they succeed ? Did they give effect to this most exalted and pure 
motive ? The Constitution is the work of their hands : if they did so at 
all, to that instrument is the place to look for it. 

Can any candid person pretend to believe that, with their love of 
freedom and hatred for tyrannical and unequal and unjust government, 
and with their intelligence, they would, after due caution and elaborate 
and rio-id criticism, have bound the States to a government in which a 
strong'and powerful majority could wickedly and designedly oppress a 
weak°minority with impunity; and from which such minority could, for 
ffood cause or bad, only rid itself by the exercise of the right of rebellion 
and revolution, in which force is the only arbiter, and in which the stronger 
is reasonably presumed to be superior ? Can we at once suppose that 
such men as Baldwin, Butler, Pinckney, Eutledge, Madison, Blair, 
Carroll, and G-eorge Washington, would ever have agreed that the States 
they represented should be bound to any such despotism ? Nay. Would 
those States ever have ratified such agreement ? Never ! Never ! ! 
They made no such government. The evidence cannot be found in the 
history of the country which led to it, not in the debates of the conven- 
tion that made it, not in those of the States that adopted it,_ not in the 
subsequent opinions of its framers, not in the Constitution itself. The 
evidence can nowhere be found. 

The Constitution of the United States was not made by the whole 
people thereof, through delegates in a convention, but by the States, 
acting through delegates representing each the State from which tliey 
came!' Nor "was it ratified by the whole people oi masse, but by the 
States as separate communities, by a convention of each, and not by 
submitting the question to a popular vote. They acceded to the consti- 
tutional compact as sovereigns and as equals. It is not meant that they 
were equal in area, wealth," population, or representative strength, as it 
relates to the class of representation which proceeds direct from the 
people as signified by the ballot-box; but equal as regards that class of 
representation which reflects the will of the State acting as a sovereign 
political community. Hence each State, small and large, has two and 
only two senators. Equal in political rights and prerogatives, equal m 



64 THE DISUNIONIST. 

their attributes of sovereignty, and in their duties and obligations to the 
General Grovernraent and to each other. We have denied that sovereignty 
resides in the Gleneral Government, by which is meant the temporary 
occupants of place and power, such as the Congress, President, Cabinet, 
etc., in their own right as such. Then where, in this country, does it 
reside ? It resides somewhere in all independent governments, whether 
they be monarchies, republics, or confederacies. For instance, in a 
monarchy the crown represents the sovereignty, from which all grants to 
the subject of liberties or restrictions upon royal prerogative proceed : 
such was Magna Charta, a grant from King John to his loyal subjects 
of England. But on this side of the Atlantic our notions are different. 
The people here, in the first place, are taken to hold all power. Hence, 
instead of granting privileges from the throne down to the people, the 
grants proceed from them to the government, which is the creature and 
not the creator; not the giver of liberties, but the agent created to make 
the preservation of the liberties already possessed the more easy and con- 
venient. In a republic, like one of the States, the power is granted, by 
the Constitution thereof, to the Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary. 
In a confederacy, like the United States, each one of the States, acting 
as a political community, has united in a grant of power to the General 
Government for a limited purpose, and to a limited extent. Neither 
can the sovereignty reside in the whole people of the United States, 
because they are not a consolidated political community. There is not a 
single act of government which they do as a whole people. Nor can the 
sovereignty of our whole country reside in any one State ; but the so- 
vereignty of each, unabridged and undivided, being associated, (not 
blended,) make the United States. It is not a copartnership, but may in 
part be illustrated by that subject. A., B., and C. are partners in mer- 
chandise : A. is not the firm, B. is not, C. is not, but all three associated 
make the firm. The acts of that firm are not done in the name of A., 
B., nor C, but in their firm name; nor are their acts done in the name 
of any agent they may appoint. The States, in the exercise of those acts 
of sovereignty and supreme authority which the United States may do 
consistently with the organic law, do not act in the name of the Presi- 
dent and Congress, not in the name of New York or Ohio, but in the 
name and by the authority of the States, united ; which means no more 
and no less than in the name and by the authority of Alabama, Arkan- 
sas, and all the rest, naming them. Hence the propriety of retaining 
the name ''United States," which imports confederacy, instead of a 
name which would import vationcdity, such, for instance, as Columbia, 
or America. 

The President and Congress do not possess sovereignty; they do not 
exercise any act thereof in their own right, nor by the consent of one 
State alone, but by the consent and authority of thirty-one sovereignties, 
not blended in one, but associated together. There can be no such idea 
as that of a single sovereign political community of the United States. 
But as many States as there are, so many sovereignties exist, and the 
authority of each — not of all in a mass — authorizes the General Govern- 
ment to exercise its functions and powers in their right and in their 
name. 



THEDISUNIONIST. 65 

In the evont one or more of the States should retire from the Union, 
let us see what would be the effect upon those remaining, as it would 
affect the government. It would not destroy, nor would it diiuiiiisli 
their vitality as a government. Hence there would be no reason for re- 
straining a retiring State, unless it were for the purpose of enslaving her. 

When the Constitution was made, the last clause put in was, "that the 
ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the 
establishment of this Constitution, between the States so ratifying the 
same." Nine States did ratify, but the balance at first refused to ratify. 
After the ratification of the nine States, did not the Government of the 
United States have all the power and prerogative, as such, which it now 
has? The accession of the other States was not essential to the validity 
of the government. Nor did those who made the government claim any 
right to force the others to agree to the Constitution. Argument and 
persuasion was the only thing they felt authorized to resort to. But 
suppose when North Carolina came in, Georgia should have immediately 
gone out, would that have destroyed the government? And what more 
power over Georgia gone out would they have had or claimed than over 
ilhode Island remaining out ? 

The government was consummated when the nine States acceded to 
it, according to the terms; and although we have increased greatly in 
power and wealth, yet our government has no more attributes of power 
now than when first ratified by those nine. 

When the writer was taught geography at school, there were twenty- 
six States. Still fiirther back there was a time when there were only 
seventeen. How has the number increased? By the voluntary acces- 
sion of newly organized States. Suppose, by the voluntary going out of 
some, the number should again be reduced to twenty-six, or seventeen, 
would their government be deprived of any attribute of power it now has, 
except its jurisdiction over the territory and people within tlie seceding 
States ? Why, then, should they wish to retain them ? Why dare, by 
force, to restrain them, to enslave them, to collect tribute from them, 
to impose upon them burdens which they are unwilling themselves to 
bear? This answer contains the true reason why the Ncn-th would wish 
to retain us in the Union, and why the South should wish to retire 
from it. 



CHAPTER XV. 

CONCLUSION. 



The Union having originated in the necessities of the parties to it, 
and their actual insecurity without the mutual aid and protection it 
afforded, and having for a long time answered the purposes for which it 
was created, gratitude would induce a generous people to adhere to and 
preserve it, provided it were not an actual evil. But when its preserva- 
tion requires constant and costly sacrifices, which are uniformly imposed 
5 



66 THE DISUNIONIST. 

by a strong upon a weak section; when one section of the Union, con- 
scious of its power, lost to all feelings of gratitude for past benefits, arro- 
gates to itself the right to levy tribute upon the other, and to impose 
upon it the burdens of government, and appropriate to itself its benefits, 
and to wage a ceaseless and unprincipled warfare upon the property and 
domestic institutions of the other — institutions in which the strong sec- 
tion has no interest; property in which the people of the strong section 
have not a dollar invested, and which costs them not a cent, and in 
which the weaker section is interested to a vast extent, both in a pecu- 
niary and social point of view, the destruction of which would cause the 
prostration of her vast agricultural interest, and the ruin of her poor as 
well as rich; then, in that case, the subject of gratitude is viewed from 
a difterent angle of vision, and is seen in a difi'erent coloring. If it were 
true that the North had done and suftered all to achieve pur liberties and 
our independence, and the South had been an idle spectator, taking no 
part iu the toil and danger, playing no character in the stupendous 
scene, even then it might be safely assumed that the thousands of mil- 
lions of dollars tribute we have already paid them would long since have 
discharged the debt. But when it is recollected that the South, in pro- 
portion to her then wealth and numbers, bore and suffered equally with 
the North, and that, inasmuch as neither section could have succeeded 
alone, they are in debt to us as well as we to them, and that the claims 
set off and cancel each other, who then can consider gratitude sufficient 
cause for the South to endure the Union ? If half we have shown from 
officially published facts be true, no one can doubt that we would dissolve 
a union with 3Iexico or Spain for a tithe of the wrongs we have suffered. 
Yet we love not Mexico or Spain, England or France; neither do we hate 
them. We are prepared, as they are, to do and receive, to render and 
exact simple justice; and our regard for the people of those and all other 
countries is commensurate with the interests we have in them respect- 
ively as a people. Can a native of Georgia or Alabama say as much of 
the people of the Northern States? Is there not, appealing to the secret 
impulses of every Southern heart, a total want of congeniality between us 
and them ; for the most part, instead of that fraternal regard which 
characterized our fathers, a feeling of deep-seated and settled hatred ? 
It may be suppressed by circumstances, bridled by associations and 
interest, and not fully developed, in many instances, for the want of 
thought and information; but such a feeling pervades the South, and 
there is no use to deny it. Do you ask me if I have divined the hearts 
and consciences of the people who have not spoken out ? I have not, ex- 
cept by this process of reason. Our people are neither cowards nor 
slaves: they do not submit to wanton injury and insult unatoued for. 
Every man who has lived among them, in town or country, and wit- 
nessed the courage with which they redress grievances, and the mag- 
nanimity with which they forgive when the proper atonement is made, 
knows this to be true. And although they are not gencrallt/ as well 
educated as the common people of the North, yet they are not an igno- 
rant people. They must necessarily know much of the wantonness and 
insolence with which the North usually proceeds to deprive them of their 
rights. They also know something of how long they have suffered and 



THE DISUNIONIST. 6T 

waited in hope of better days. No other conclusion is compatible with 
the character of the people of the South than that, with all their forbear- 
ance and Ions-suffering, in their hearts there lingers a noble and redeem- 
ing feeling of resistance, that needs only the exciting influence of popu- 
lar leaders to put it in action, and'to cause them to "disrupt" the ties of 
the Union. 

Are we told that our people should submit to the injuries, a part of 
which we have described, because there are countervailing benefits to 
them bestowed by the Union ? "Will some patriotic sage who teaches 
that doctrine be pleased to point out one of them to the public ? Will he 
lift the dismal vail that has so long shrouded the good parts of the 
Union, and let the people of the present generation gaze on them for 
once ? Will some amateur Unionist have the kindness to point out 
wherein there is not a radical difference of interests between the North 
and South, so far as legislation and civil administration can affect the 
pecuniary and social interests of the people ? Will he show by what 
process of reason he controverts the proposition, that whatever advances 
the North retards the South, and that ours, being the weaker section, is 
retarded nt every point ? 

That the South is capable, when united, of maintaining a separate ex- 
istence, in peace and war, no one with a knowledge of her people and 
resources can entertain a doubt ; while it is equally true that there would 
be less inducement and fewer chances for her to become entangled in 
hostile relations with foreign nations than any country in the whole 
civilized world, and none whose inherent strength better prepares her to 
repel invasion and resist intrusions from without. The tribute we now 
pay the North, directly and indirectly, would defray the expenses of an 
army sufficient to defend the Southern Confederacy against any invading 
power upon earth. 

Let us imagine that peace, instead of war, should prevail for a 
quarter of a c'entury, and the money, instead of being paid out in 
tribute to the North, or to support armies, should be saved to our 
people, and all obstructions removed from the prosperous and successful 
prosecution of our domestic interests, there is no doubt we would be the 
richest and happiest people in the world. Why the happiest ?_ Because 
the condition of the poor white man, in consequence of the existence of 
African slavery here, as we have shown, is infinitely better than that of 
the poor of any country on the globe. The relation of master and slave 
here is more conducive to the permanent satisfaction of the master and 
servant than under any other system; while we approach nearer the 
perfect model of republicanism than any other people can possibly do. 

With us there is an "indissoluble community of interests," which 
would be a certain guaranty of the perpetuity of a Southern Union tor 
all time. Not so with our neighbors of the Northern government. So 
soon as the Union is dissolved, and the excitement attendant thereon 
subsides, and the people of the North, having less to oversee, being re- 
lieved from their responsibility of taking care of the souls and consciences 
of other people, and being deprived of the rich spoils they now enjoy at 
our expense, they will find time and opportunity to examine the condi- 
tion of home affairs. The advantages of one class over another, the 



68 THEDISUNIONIST. 

inanufactnrina; over the airi'icultural interests, will hang heavier npon the 
hearts of those interested in the latter than negro shivery ever did : the 
warfare that will ensue will prubahly be more terrific than their pious 
bellowing about "bleeding Kansas" or the ''higher law." 

It is said that the governments of Europe desire to see the Union of 
the American States dissolved. It is quite reasonable to suppose they 
do. But for what purpose ? Some arc simple enough to suppose it 
were for the purpose of getting rid of the power of the United States as 
at present organized, in order to overthrow the institutiou of slavery — 
even to cobpcrate with the North for that purpose. To suppose that is 
to concede that all the statesmen in Europe are a set of unmitigated 
fools; that their admitted prejudice against the morality of African 
slavery would induce them to inflict (if they could even hope to succeed 
in the attempt of emancipation) upon their own manufacturing interest 
a wound the evils of which time would fail to repair; it is to concede 
that they will do an act tending directl3' to bring starvation upon their 
own poor operatives, in order to bestow upon tlie slaves of the South an 
act of mistaken philanthropy; an act intended perhaps to benefit a race 
who are already more comfortable and happy than their own poor, and 
which, if successful, would destroy the comfort and hapiiiness of the 
slave, and bring him down to a level with the poor of London and New 
York. 

If Europe desires to see the separation of our States, it is to promote 
interest, Moi fanci/. If she could get rid of our tarifi", or even have the 
North placed upon an equal footing with her merchants in the payment 
of tariff duties, it would greatly enhance the interests of Europe, while 
it would be disastrous to the people of the North, so far as the trade of 
the South is concerned ; while the benefits to the people of the South 
would be incalculable, if goods were admitted duty free. But whether 
duty free or paying duty, the same rate would be imposed upou the 
North and other countries. In that case, the cheapness of labor in Europe, 
which is employed in the production of commodities, would enable their 
merchants to undersell those of the North, which,would of course give 
them a monopoly. And would they be simple enough to desire to unite 
with the North, or any other people, to destroyer curtail that advantage, 
as well as ruin her manufacturing interests at home, by depriving the 
factories of the cotton produced by the slave, and which slaves only will 
produce in any great quantities ? 

And herein will consist the cause of destruction to the North in case 
of disunion. We have seen in chapter vii., for a given year, the total 
manufactures of the United States, most of which was in the North, 
amounted to the sum of o4 ' OVon billionl^ and fifty-five millions of dollars, 
and that only eleven millions of dollars' worth were exported : the balance 
of course was sold in the country : except the small portion made in the 
South, that enormous sum was sold by the North, the proportion of 
which sold to the South we cannot arrive at. But the amount must be 
enormous : whatever it is, the goods thus sold by the North to the 
South would be furnished far cheaper by Europe but for the tariff. 
Take away the tariff, or place the manufactures of the North and Europe 
on an equal footing in reference to it, and the goods of Europe will take 



TIIEDISUNIONIST. 69 

precedence, and exclude those of the North. Woukl that not destroy 
the manufactures, the paramount interest of the North ? There would 
be but oue remedy, which would be to put down labor, which would be 
equally ruinous to the poor. This latter result would inevitably take 
place, and the North would immediately, if it is not already, become a 
confirmed aristocracy. 

"We have made in a former chapter a brief estimate of the value of the 
exports of the United States, and the comparative value of the single 
article of cotton. That calculation shows that the chief value of our 
country to the commercial world is in the South ; that while we offer no 
competition in manufacturing and shipping, ours is the section which 
otfers the prime inducement to other countries to cultivate our peace and 
trade with us. 

Those estimates take the prices now paid for cotton. It should be 
borne in mind that the area of land in the world where cotton can be 
successfully grown is comparatively very small, and that the extent of 
the inhabited globe where it has not been brought into general consump- 
tion, in consecjuence of restrictions upon commerce, and other causes, is 
comparatively very large; that the price of an article in market is 
usually regulated by tli^e ratio between supply and demand; and there- 
fore, as the demand must necessarily increase in a degree far more than 
commensurate with the increase in the production, the price of the 
article may reasonably be expected to increase — and with it the price of 
negroes and all other property employed in its growth, unless the 
reopening of the slave-trade should bring in a supply of negroes sufficient 
to reduce the price. 

It has been shown in a former chapter what a vast extent of the public 
domain we have been most unjustly excluded from by the anti-slavery 
aggressions of the North, and how impossible it is for our section to 
recover its lost rights, and be restored to a position of equality in the 
Union. A careful survey of the geographical position of the Southern 
confederacy would disclose, by a fair process of reason founded in facts, 
how, by tlie voluntary and spontaneous action of the proprietors of the 
soil upon the South and South-west, and without the smoke of gun- 
powder, our loss could be counterbalanced by more than corresponding 
gains. 

We have shown, by actual calculation, which of course cannot be 
strictly and literally correct, but which approximates true numbers and 
quantities, how expensive the Union is to the South, and how it acts as 
a drawback upon the prosperity and progress of our people. It might 
weary the patience of the general reader to trace the history of political 
parties and church organizations down to the present, and show thereby 
how nearly the Union is already dissolved in the hearts of the people ; 
that with the exception of one party — partly held together, and that only 
by the spoils of office and the commercial alliances between Northern 
and Southern merchants, which is all injurious to the South — there is no 
tie of union ; that it merely exists by law, which law is tolcrattd, not 
cherished by the people. 

Among the many interests which have suffered by the Union, an ex- 
tended chapter might be devoted to the barriers and hindrances to the 



70 THE DISUNIONIST. 

promotion of a pure Southern literature, wliich would be one of tlie 
crowning glories of a Southern confederacy. In truth, the question of 
Southern independence may be viewed in every aspect, and all the 
reasons will be found to favor it, except the mere confusion and excite- 
ment that would attend the fact of separation. It is believed that not a 
solitary reason founded in truth, and properly understood, can be shown 
why the slaveholding States should continue their connection with the 
Union; while her equality and honor, her interests and prosperity, her 
rights and liberties, and her preservation from ruin and degradation can 
only be preserved by seceding from it. 

Will the South be independent and free, or will she adhere to the 
Union, base and degrading as is her slavery in it? Will our people still 
procrastinate the time for making the issue ? Is it true that we are 
doomed to witness the South in another scramble to make a president of 
the United States? Shall our hearts be lacerated by beholding her 
stooping again to make herself a party in the programme of another 
Federal Administration ? If the Union is to be preserved, and the sub- 
ordination of the South a fixed fact, how does it concern us what masters 
we shall serve, or what set of men are to be ordained to execute the be- 
hests of a tyrannical majority? It will be a worse than worthless victory 
to elect a Southern man, for the reason that the people of the South 
would, to some extent, be committed to the support of the Administra- 
tion. It will be a comparatively harmless defeat to elect a Northern 
man, because whichever party succeeds will be a Union party; and no 
such party will venture an act which its leaders think will drive the 
South out. 

But whether the one or the other shall triumph, our section of the 
Union can expect nothing except that a few of our leading men shall get 
office. It is to be expected that the feelings of such will be enlisted, and 
their eloquence aroused. But aside from them, let each person who reads 
this propound the question to himself, and answer it to himself : What 
interest has the South in making a President ? To say nothing of the 
enormous burdens the government imposes upon us, what actual benefit 
are we as a people to derive by electing either a good or bad man Pre- 
sident ? 

After our leaders have gone to the convention, and erected the plat- 
form, and nominated the candidates, and harangued the people; after 
the people have been enlightened by their leaders, and enlightened each 
other in turn by their brilliant street-arguments; after they have 
slandered and traduced each other, and in many instances literally 
" fought through a canvass ;" after they have paid in their money to 
make barbecues and circulate documents, stolen and forced votes, and 
committed riot and bloodshed around the ballot-box ; after their triumphs 
and defeats, bonfires, illuminations, and torch-light processions ; their 
regrets, 'disappointments, mourning, and condolence; let the inquiry 
then arise in each man's mind. What have I gained by triumph ? I 
ask no office and receive no emolument; what is the fruit of my toil? 
The true answer will be, " Nothing." Let the defeated ask the question. 
I have stood up to my party, fought its battles, paid out my money, and 
made personal enemies by my exertions : now, as between the contending 



THE DISUNIONIST. 71 

parties, what else have I lost? Nothing, literally nothing ! But our 
section will have been much injured by participating in the election. 
New hopes in the minds of the people will have been created as to the 
incoming Administration, which they will wait to see disappointed. The 
position of our leading men is such, in a presidental canvass, as to cause 
them to suppress information of the evils of the Union by the praises 
they bestow upon their respective parties, and wean the minds of the 
people off, and engage them in party politics ; all of which tends to pro- 
crastinate Southern independence. But the most important consider- 
ation is, that by participating in an election between contending candi- 
dates, neither of which proposes to redress our grievances, the South 
seems to acquiesce in wrong, and agree to abide the result of an election. 

Many of our people have declared their willingness to go out of the 
Union when a Black Republican is elected President. Let us suppose 
we go into the canvass of 18G0 with our banner inscribed with the name 
of the purest Southern man in the country, and upon a sound plat- 
form ; and when the votes are counted it is ascertained that Mr. Seward, 
of New York, or a man of his opinions, is the successful competitor. 
Our Union friends will then correctly tell us that we went into the 
election, which was a fairly implied agreement to abide the result; and 
that the mere election of a Black Republican over our candidate, when 
we have taken the chances of beating him at the ballot-box, will not, of 
itself, be cause for disunion. We will be exhorted to wait until we see 
some act committed before making the issue. In this and other modes 
the postponement of Southern action will be perpetual, if we acknow- 
ledge, directly or indirectly, any affiliation with the North. 

We sliould never participate in the election of a President or Congress; 
but build a platform of one plank, and let that be secession ; and stand 
upon it, few or many, weak or strong, in life and in death; and if we 
depart before achieving the object, let us leave our weapons of warfare, 
burnished and keen, in the hands of our sons, with our example untar- 
nished by real or implied submission to wrong. Such a platform affords 
a glorious ease and freedom to a mind which for life has been trammelled 
by party prudence ; and it cannot be expected that those who seek 
federal honors in the Union will stand upon it as long as there is any 
hope. It ought, however, to be some consolation to those who are 
governed exclusively by their prospects for ofl&ce, that in a Southern 
confederacy no Northern candidate would stand between them and the 
positions they seek. All the Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Cabinet 
officers, and ministers, would be chosen from among them ; while in the 
Union, only now and then a Southern man has a chance. It would not 
only be better to the office-seeker, but infinitely better for the people 
who have to pay their salaries. As the case now stands, we pay Northern 
Presidents, Cabinetmen, and Congressmen, while they make war upon 
our rights. If separated from them, our money, so far as it is taken to 

Epay officers, would go into the pockets of Southern men, who, having no 
Northern allies to appease, could afford to take care of the interest of 
their constituents, so far as that end can be attained by legislation. 
Then Presidents and Congressmen could be honest in politics as well as 
other matters. 



5 



72 THE DISUNIONIST. 

In conclusion, wc may ventui-e to ask the reader to bear in mind that 
the union of the States is one thing, and the thing we make war upon ; 
that the liberty of the people is another thing, and the thing we wish to 
preserve and protect. He who lays aside this, and goes forth to say 
we wish to curtail, abridge, or interrupt in the slightest degree that 
freedom for which our fathers fought is either a fool or a knave. The 
right to breathe, eat, drink, rest, labor, sleep, worship Grod, marry, pro- 
vide for our families, hold property and dispose of it, and be free from 
personal restraint, enjoy healtli, life, and character, and the like, were 
not created or conferred by the Union. All such rights are protected by 
State laws, and existed before the Union was made, and would exist as 
perfectly without as with the Union. That Union was not made to enable 
the States to enact laws to protect the person and property, and all the 
civil rights of the citizen ; but to form a government suiiicicntly strong to 
withstand assaults from abroad, and to assimulate the interests of the 
neighboring States so as to secure their harmony with each other. We 
believe the South is fully able to stand alone, without the aid of the 
North ; that our interest is radically different from that of the Northern 
people; that they arc the majority, and we the minority; that they are 
the government, and we the dependants ; that the government is an en- 
cumbrance upon, instead of a safeguard and protection to the liberties 
of the people of the South; that whether we look to the subject of 
honors and office to Southern statesmen ; the social and pecuniary 
interest of the Southern people ; the institution of African slavery, its 
prostration and final overthrow in the Union, and its quiet and perma- 
nent establishment in a Southern Union ; the domestic tranquillity of the 
South, and her peace with foreign countries; her future power and glory 
contrasted with the tributary condition slae now occupies; in every 
aspect in which the Union can be viewed, it is a permanent evil to the 
South. That while it is not hoped to arrive at a perfect form of govern- 
ment in this world, or one that will be free from corruption and the in- 
ffuences of bad men in its operation, still a Southern United States would 
remedy most of the evils we labor under, and prevent most of those we 
dread in future. That while our people would be free from tribute 
abroad, they would have at home an identity of interest which would be 
a guaranty to their continued harmony. That while our interests and 
employments would be such as to provoke war from no power on earth, 
our strength would be such as to command universal respect in peace 
and repel any assault in war. That all classes of our people would be 
prosperous and happy, and enjoy all the freedom which any form of 
government can possibly afford. That such a government would, instead 
of being an actual evil, be a permanent blessing to us and to posterity 
for all coming asjcs. 



THE END. 



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